Cooking inspiration comes to me in predictable ways. Sometimes it's smelling what a neighbor is cooking, the memory of a meal I particularly enjoyed, the weather, or perhaps the most frequent inspiration – seeing a delicious recipe photo on the internet. My latest baking attempt – Chocolate Mini-Bundt Cakes – came from a completely unexpected source, an interview with the author Min Jin Lee.
I had just completed Lee's masterpiece Pachinko and in the library e-book version I read, an interview with Lee appeared after the book text. In it, Min Jin Lee spoke about how baking the Cook's Illustrated Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake helped her overcome homesickness for the U.S. when she lived in Japan, in turn allowing her to write Pachinko.
I haven't used my mini-bundt pan in at least 4 years (the only bundt pan I own), but I thought if this recipe helped Min Jin Lee write this masterpiece, maybe it'll inspire me in some way as well?
After trying many recipe adjustment calculations to try to achieve the perfect amount of batter for my 6 mini-bundt pan, I decided to keep things simple and just half the recipe. I figured I could make a smaller cake or cupcakes with the leftover batter from the bundts, which I knew would use less than half of the batter. In practice, halving the batter resulted in 6 mini-bundts and 4 cupcakes.
First coat the bundt pan in a cocoa-butter mixture to prevent sticking.
The batter process is fairly easy, though unfortunately it is a three-bowl, and not one-bowl, operation.
I baked the mini-bundts for 25 minutes, and the cupcakes for 20 minutes. The cupcake baking time was perfect, but I think the mini-bundts were slightly overbaked as they ended up drier than I had hoped. So I will reduce the baking amount by a few minutes the next time I make them.
These cakes didn't knock my socks off, but it might be because of the slight overbaking. While I am not sure if I will make them again, I appreciate the inspiration from Lee and look forward to using my unearthed mini-bundt pan more often.
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