Vanilla and chocolate deliciously swirled, with a silky smooth chocolate hazelnut ganache. This Chocolate Hazelnut Bundt Cake is so delicious and perfect for a celebration of just an afternoon tea!
Bundt cakes are one of my favourite types of cake – they’re so easy to make, but also taste delicious and last really well. They also look really beautiful, without much decoration effort required on your part! This Bundt has vanilla and chocolate sponges swirled together, with the smoothest chocolate hazelnut ganache poured on top. And of course chopped hazelnuts to finish, giving the best combination of textures.
Key Ingredients You’ll Need
- Sour Cream – In Bundt cakes or pound cakes, sour cream is often used as its high fat content helps give your cake moisture and richness. It also helps to give your cake a perfectly tender crumb. So please don’t try and substitute it!
- Coffee – Now I know this isn’t a coffee cake, but adding freshly brewed coffee to a chocolate cake really helps to intensify the chocolate flavour. I promise you won’t taste any coffee if you’re not a fan!
- Milk Chocolate – This is only for the ganache topping, as the Bundt cake uses cocoa powder rather than block chocolate. Try and use the best quality milk chocolate you can, and your ganache will taste all the better for it.
How to make a chocolate hazelnut Bundt cake:
The Bundt cake is quite straightforward to make, but does take quite a long baking time! But the best part in my opinion, is the ganache! Its so so delicious, and honestly couldn’t be simpler!
Making the Bundt cake:
When it comes to baking a Bundt cake, the first step you need to take, is to properly ensure your baking tin is ready. The Bundt tin needs to be well greased and then floured, to help your Bundt cake come out easily in one piece! There’s nothing worse than not being able to get your cake out of the tin!!
Then you can begin with the batter, by first creating the chocolate ‘paste’. Combining freshly brewed coffee with the cocoa powder, gives the cocoa powder a chance to bloom and really intensifies the chocolate flavour. Its best to make this first and set it to the side, so you don’t melt the vanilla batter when its added!
For the vanilla batter, its a straightforward process. Creaming the butter and sugar together first, adding eggs one at a time then adding vanilla. For the final step, the flour needs to be added in 3 parts, with the sour cream alternating between that. I.e. You would add 1/3 of flour, 1/2 sour cream, 2/3 flour, 2/2 sour cream, 3/3 flour
Baking the Bundt cake:
Once you’ve made your vanilla cake batter, you’ll need to separate it into two. Then the chocolate paste you made earlier can be mixed into one of the vanilla cake halves – creating a gorgeously thick chocolate batter. Now layer them up in your prepared tin, alternating often so you get a good mixture of both batters.
Then the cake must be baked for 50 minutes. Quite a long time I know, but this is a big cake! Once baked leave the Bundt cake in the tin for 10 minutes, and then place on a cooling rack to cool completely. If you followed the tin preparation steps properly, it should just slide out!
Making the ganache:
When you break it down, a ganache is the most simplest of decorations. Just cream and chocolate. But. It can be prone to splitting and that’s what makes it a little trickier!
My best advice with ganache is to treat it like a baby. Veryyyyy gentle movements, and not too fast. Also, chop your chocolate very finely! This will help it to melt evenly and quickly.
As this is a chocolate hazelnut ganache, the chopped chocolate needs to be mixed with a chocolate hazelnut spread (I used Nutella) first, before the boiled cream is poured over. Then it can be left to thicken a little, before pouring over the cooled bundt cake.
For a final touch, I then added more chopped hazelnuts on top for an added textural crunch!
Tips & Tricks
Ideally this recipe should be made in a Bundt tin, but you could make your own DIY version using a normal cake tin. The recipe is made to be very moist, as there are so many parts of the cake that are exposed to high heat – i.e. the sides but also the middle! So baking it in a regular cake tin without a hole in the middle, may not work so well.
I personally think the best way to stop your Bundt cake from sticking to the tin, is greasing really well with butter and then sprinkling with a light dusting of butter. That combination has always meant my cake has slipped out easily.
You absolutely can and it will keep for 2 days in an air-tight container at room temperature. However, as the ganache is intended to be poured onto the cake, I think its easier to make the day off so you have the perfect pouring consistency.
I’m SO happy with how this chocolate hazelnut Bundt cake turned out, its so moist and flavourful. And omg the ganache!! Its so so delicious, I could have eaten that out of the bowl with a spoon to be honest! It also lasts really well, the perfect cake to make on a Sunday afternoon and snack throughout the week.
If you give it a go I’d love to know what you thought!!
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Chocolate Hazelnut Bundt Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 50 g cocoa powder
- 90 ml freshly brewed black coffee approx. 1tsp ground coffee
- 180 g unsalted butter room temperature
- 335 g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 375 g plain flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 225 g sour cream
Ganache
- 80 g milk chocolate
- 80 g chocolate hazelnut spread
- 100 ml double cream
- 25 g hazelnuts chopped roughly
Instructions
- For the cake: Firstly, grease and flour a Bundt tin and set aside. Then preheat your oven to 175C/155C Fan/Gas Mark 4. In a small bowl, combine the brewed coffee and cocoa powder to make a thick paste. Then set aside.
- In a large bowl, using an electric hand-whisk, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then mix in the eggs one at a time, and then add the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a small bowl. Then mix into the batter in 3 increments, alternating with the sour cream between each.
- Place half the batter into a separate bowl, and mix in the cocoa paste until well combined. Then spoon the batters into the prepared tin, alternating between the vanilla and chocolate batters. Then bake for 50 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, before removing and leaving on a cooling rack to cool completely.
- For the ganache: Chop the chocolate into very fine pieces, and combine with the chocolate hazelnut spread in a medium bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan on a medium heat for 1-2 minutes, until bubbles appear on the whole surface of the cream. Pour this over the chocolate mixture and leave for a couple of minutes. Then using a silicone spatula, gently stir until the combined and you have a silky and shiny ganache. Leave to thicken and cool a little.
- Transfer the ganache into a jug, and pour over the cooled Bundt cake, letting it slowly drip down the sides. Then sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts.
