BUNDT CAKE LAYS THE CHOCOLATE ON THICK

Honey renders a glossy, thick ganache for a rich glaze

I will gladly eat any type of cake, though chocolate is at the top of the list. When I realized we didn’t have a straightforward chocolate Bundt cake in our recipe archives, I knew I had to get one in there. Nothing fancy, mind you — just something that was pure chocolate to its very core and, even better, pretty simple to make.

The result is a deep, dark and plush cake dressed up mostly by the shape of the Bundt pan and a drizzle of the optional, but highly recommended, glaze. It’s so cocoaforward it may remind you of a brownie. “Fudgy” was the happy reaction from several of my tasters.

I did a few rounds of testing before deciding I wanted to take an old Washington Post recipe from cookbook author Marcy Goldman in a new direction. Her recipe was a riff on the famous Pillsbury Bake-Off Tunnel of Fudge Cake, and I had some ideas for how I’d go about using the framework to create my own ideal cake. Here’s what really makes my version click.

Dutch-process cocoa powder — an entire cup — brings rich, robust cocoa flavor. Blooming it in hot water with espresso powder further amplifies the chocolate. Don’t swap in natural cocoa powder, which is more acidic, as this recipe’s ingredients (dairy, leavener, etc.) have been configured to work with Dutch. My absolute favorite is King Arthur Baking’s Double Dutch Dark Cocoa. I also tested with Droste, an excellent brand more widely available at grocery stores and online.

A mix of butter and oil gives the cake the ideal cross in texture between a pound cake and layer cake — not as dense or dry as the former or as open and wet as the latter. Instead, you get a fairly tight crumb that’s still very tender.

Cutting back the white sugar really lets the chocolate flavor shine through. I rely more on brown sugar (dark or light, doesn’t matter), which reinforces that moist texture I was after.

Many similar cakes use a ganache glaze made with heavy cream and chopped chocolate. Neither of those were in my cake, so I set about creating one made with ingredients already in the recipe. My solution is basically a reverse-engineered ganache made with butter, milk and cocoa powder. The only extra ingredient is honey, which I assume is in most bakers’ pantries. The honey is ideal for making the glaze smooth, glossy and delightfully chewy without the risk of turning brittle as it sets. Heck, if the glaze is the only thing you take away from this recipe to use on other desserts, I would not be mad. It’s that good. I use vanilla extract to flavor it, but you can make it your own with other extracts (orange, almond, mint) or liqueurs (amaretto, Kahlua, Frangelico).

The Bundt pan adds instant flair, but if you don’t have one, the recipe converts beautifully to a loaf. And if you’re vegan, you will not be disappointed by the dairy- and egg-free version of this cake, which is arguably even fudgier and more tender than the original.