Friday, March 5, 2010

Contessa's chocolate cake with mandarin hearts

Chocolate cake cravings are uncontrollable. When you want to have it, you got to have it. So today I baked, different because I rarely bake, its very difficult for me to stick to exact quantities.

This is a take on Barefoot Contessa's chocolate cake.

Dry ingredients:
1 and 3/4 cups A.P. flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Wet ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk or yogurt
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
 2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
four shots espresso

1/2 to 3/4 can preserved mandarin

Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Butter a bundt cake pan, and flour it.

Sift the dry ingredients together, and combine them thoroughly. Combine the wet ingredients and then add the wet ingredients to the dry and combine at low speed. Add the espresso. Pour half the batter into the pan, lay mandarin slices on top and pour the remaining batter. Bake for about 45 min.

Next time I shall add 1/2 cup toasted and coarsely chopped almonds. The cake batter is a bit thin. But the cake turns out really moist and very chocolatey.