Cookaholics Bulletin Board

has anyone else tried this cake from the Baked cookbook? i have oohed and awed over almost every recipe in this book, i mean it is wonderfully photographed and brilliantly written but i just havnt tried many. it has taken me nearly a year to finally make this cake which they said they set out to have strong rootbeer flavor. is it just me or is this just a chocolate cake? i had reservations when it asked for 1 cup of cocoa powder but mixed it up anyway. tasted it and sure enough chocolate. baked it. sure enough chocolate. so disappointed and doubly so cuz i JUST made the CI sour cream chocolate bundt cake about 2 weeks ago. really not interested in another one right now. ( i used a&w rootbeer, not diet, and callebaut cocoa powder)

A&W isn't very strong root beer. Barq's might be a better choice. At least its strong hit of wintergreen would stand out against the cocoa.

I remember reading that recipe, and wondering if the flavor would be noticeable, with that strong cocoa flavor - one I didn't "mark", for that reason, and you proved my suspicions. Maybe it needs some root beer extract?

I did make it and thought that the root beer enhanced the chocolate flavor, but did not add its own flavor. I prefer their regular chocolate cake from the salty caramel cake recipe to the root beer cake.

well thank you. i feel better.
will try something else out of there book. this one has got to be the exception, right?!

Most definitely....it is one of my favorite books ( as are all of their books)

I made this cake a couple of years ago and mine did not have an overwhelming Root Beer flavor either. I agree with Ilene that the Root Beer enhances the Chocolate flavor.

Speaking of bundt cakes...has anyone else had any difficulty getting a crisp pattern from the Nordicware mini bundt pan? (It's the one that has 6 cups that are mini versions of the regular shaped pan). I've done 2 recipes in it now, and neither have come out with nice sharp edges typical of the larger bundt cakes. My last mini bundts were so deformed that my 2 year old neice was referring to them as doughnuts. It didn't help that the ganache kept solidifying up and took out what little pattern there was (they did, in fact, look exactly like glazed cake doughnuts). I am also glaze challenged in terms of getting those decorative drizzles down the sides of bundts.

On topic, I am doing my best to resist buying these books. My booty does not need baking at the moment (I'm going to keep telling myself that, even though it's not really helping).

Carey,

Lemon-poppy seed cake seems to come out just fine, but orange-cranberry bread sometimes loses definition, especially in the one with all of the little ridges. I don't glaze either of those and I've never done bundts in them. It seems to work best with something that is sturdy and doesn't have large bits in it.