Baby Cocoa Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Coffee Cakes

These little cakes were a new addition to my Holiday Food Gifts that I gave for Christmas this year (well I guess that’s actually last year, really, geez, anyway…..).  They will stay on the  food gift list.  I alternated them in packaging with the mini-bundt Sour Cream Pound Cake.  Nice combo.

You will need little bundt pans like this: Mini Bundt Pans.  I bought mine at Michaels and either they were Celebrate It 6 Cavity Fluted Pans or Wilton’s Mini Fluted Mold Pan.  If buying the pans seems ridiculous to you, then put the batter in a *12-cup Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50 – 60 minutes.

I used to pick up this magazine called Chocolatier once in a while, which this recipe came from.   I tried finding a link to the recipe but the magazine is no longer published, so the recipe is as follows, with a few tweaks from me:

Baby Cocoa Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Coffee Cakes (adapted from Chocolatier magazine, March 1997)

2-3/4 cups flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

9 ounces butter

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

2-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

8 ounces sour cream

14 ounces of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate mini chips (if you can find them) or regular chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray the mini bundt pans with Pam Baking Spray or something similar and set aside.   If this is unavailable to you, then spray the pans with Canola Oil spray, then put about a teaspoon of flour into each cavity and rotate the pans around until thoroughly coated with the flour, then knock out excess.  Try to get the baking spray, it’s worth it.  I got 17 mini bundt cakes out of this recipe, which means you need 3 pans.  You could get by with 2 pans, bake the 12, cool and remove cakes.  Clean pan and bake the other 5 mini cakes.  I’ve done it, just a little more time consuming.  You could also experiment with putting the extra batter in cupcake tins but the baking time will be different.  Or you could just put the whole batter in a *12 cup bundt pan.

Start creaming your butter in the bowl of your electric mixer at medium speed, gradually increasing the speed.  While the butter is getting soft, get together your other ingredients.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together and set aside.

Combine eggs and vanilla in a medium bowl and set aside.

When the butter is nice and soft, add the sugar and beat until thoroughly combined.  Add the egg mixture, one egg at a time and beat until light yellow and fluffy.  Scrape down the bowl at least once to make sure you get the batter from the bottom of the bowl.

With the mixer on low, alternately add the flour mixture and sour cream, making sure the flour is incorporated before adding sour cream.

Stir in the chocolate chips.

Divide the batter among the 17 mini bundt pans.  1/2 cup of batter per mini bundt.

Bake for 14 – 15 minutes.  Chocolate cake can be tricky and can be easily overbaked.  Insert a toothpick into one of the mini cakes, it should come out fairly clean or with a few cake crumbs attached.

Cool the cakes for about 15 minutes on wire racks.  Then take a dull knife and very carefully make sure that there is no cake stuck onto the pan.  Invert cakes onto wire rack and cool completely.  Serve as is or dusted with a little confectionary sugar.

creamed butter and the rest of the ingredients:

batter in pans:

cakes out of oven:

cooling on racks:

yum!: