Rich & Moist Chocolate Bundt Cake Recipe

You have likely heard of (and, hopefully, tasted!) Bundt cake, as its distinctive, fluted pan can be found in over 75 million home kitchens across the globe.

Perhaps a family member baked a Bundt cake to share at a gathering  — a delicious sour cream coffee cake Bundt for brunch or a vanilla Bundt cake with strawberries and whipped cream for a celebratory dessert. Whatever the recipe, Bundt cakes have proven themselves quite delicious over the years. In fact, the Bundt cake’s rise to fame happened when it was used to make the prize-winning cake for the Pillsbury Bake-Off in Minneapolis in 1965. The gooey, chocolatey confection was called Tunnel of Fudge Cake and inspired home cooks everywhere to try their hand at making a winning cake of their own.

Because the Bundt cake is not only the winner of a Minnesota baking contest, but also invented here in Minnesota by the Nordic Ware company, I thought it might be appropriate to share one of my favorite Bundt cake recipes with you.

My Rich Chocolate Bundt cake is similar to Tunnel of Fudge in that it is rich and chocolatey. This recipe was given to me by a cousin at my bridal shower, and it, too, is a winner.

With the addition of a few ‘secret’ ingredients (melted ice cream!) and some tips on how to work with a Bundt pan to get maximum performance (read: no sticking), you will be able to impress your friends with a delicious, beautiful Bundt cake of your own.

In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to adorn this Bundt cake with a bit of green in the form of Andes mints atop vanilla buttercream rosettes, but you can add whatever decorations suit your occasion.

Let’s get started.

Chocolate Bundt Cake Recipe

Gather your ingredients and equipment. This recipe requires only a few ingredients: chocolate cake mix (Devil’s Food cake mix or King Arthur Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake Mix—the absolute gold standard for gluten-free cake mixes, in my opinion), eggs, water, 1 pint melted chocolate ice cream, and cooking spray and flour (regular or gluten-free) for preparing the pan.

You will also need a Bundt pan with at least 10 cups of capacity. The one I use here is versatile, with a 10 – 15 cup capacity. You can order a pan through Nordic Ware or even find one at a thrift shop if you know what to look for!

To make the cake, combine the cake mix, water, eggs, and melted ice cream and mix on medium speed for 5 minutes.

While the batter is mixing, prepare your Bundt pan. Liberally spray the pan with cooking spray and then coat it with flour, tapping the pan so that there is an even coating of flour over the pan’s surface. This process will help the cake come out of the pan once baked.

Pour the batter into your Bundt pan and then bake at 350° for 45-48 minutes, until cake begins to pull away from the edge of the pan slightly and a cake tester comes out clean.

Your baked cake will look like this:

Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before inverting to cool completely on a wire rack. To be triple sure the cake comes out cleanly from the pan, I like to give the pan a little shake up and down to feel for the cake lifting out of the pan.

If you notice areas that seem to stick, you can take a plastic knife and go around the edges of the pan to help the cake ease out.

Once the cake has cooled, prepare your frosting — a simple, delicious buttercream.

I love using a piping bag fitted with a metal tip to decorate the top of the cake with buttercream while leaving the bottom part uncovered to highlight the form of the cake itself.

To make the frosting, mix the softened butter at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Then, add half of the confectioner’s sugar, half and half, and the vanilla and mix until incorporated. Add the remaining confectioner’s sugar and mix until you have a creamy frosting.

Now, you are ready to decorate! Snip the end of a piping bag and fit the piping tip inside the bag—pipe frosting ‘rounds’ to decorate the top of the cake.

Decorate the top with Andes Mints and you are ready to dig in!