Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake with Irish Cream Glaze.
This dark chocolate bundt cake is tender with the perfect crumb and chocolate flavor, then drizzled in an irish cream chocolate icing. Such a delicious dessert!
This time of year screams chocolate cake!
This bundt is perfect for Saint Patrick’s Day and drizzled in the most delicious Bailey’s Irish Cream glaze. A rich chocolate icing infused with irish cream liqueur that really shines through. It’s the best sweet ending to a hectic day and lovely weekend dessert!
I love a good bundt cake! Baking is not my strong suit and I don’t have a ton of patience for layer cakes. I’m all about the sheet cakes and an occasional bundt. Bundts are fun and pretty and sometimes a showstopper on the dessert table.
I’ve done a dark chocolate bundt cake before and loved it. I make one with a dragonfruit glaze and it’s stunning and fantastic. However! I wanted to try a different chocolate cake. Supposedly this is the one that Ina Garten likes?! Which meant I had to try it.
This cake is insanely good. It’s the perfect chocolate bundt. Deep in chocolate flavor, not overly sweet, super tender with the best crumb. And the ideal vehicle for a chocolate irish cream icing drizzled on top!
The other thing is that this cake is EASY. You add all the wet ingredients to a mixer then add in all of your dry ingredients. Beat for five minutes, pour in a bundt cake and bake. That’s it! It does use buttermilk and hot coffee and dutch cocoa, but everything else is most likely hiding in your pantry!
You can watch me make it on instagram today.
A few things that make this dark chocolate bundt cake work:
- Use cocoa powder instead of flour for the inside of the bundt pan. This makes the cake look extra pretty.
- Dutch cocoa powder is the way to go. It gives you that extra rich dark chocolate flavor. And look!
- An entire cup of coffee goes into this cake. I swear – it does not taste like coffee at ALL. Not one bit. Trust me. Eddie loathes coffee and I can promise there is no coffee flavor here. It just enhances the chocolate flavor. It deepens it and adds a layer of flavor that chocolate alone can’t do. If you are absolutely against this, you can use hot water.
- The Irish cream icing is everything. It contains chopped dark chocolate and powdered sugar along with warm Irish cream liqueur and it is silky smooth and rich. It doesn’t need to cover the entire cake. Just the top and let it drip down!
This Irish cream icing is my new favorite thing.
I alternate between calling it a glaze and an icing. It does glaze down the cake, but it uses actual chocolate, which firms up as it cools. So then it is more like an icing. It is so wonderful and loaded with Irish cream flavor. If that’s not your thing, you could probably also try a coffee liqueur or even a white chocolate liqueur like Godiva.
I have a few chocolate cakes for this time of year – ones you can make to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day! This salted chocolate stout cake is incredible. My whiskey chocolate cake is easier and delicious too. But this one seems even simpler and is a recipe that everyone is loving.
I mean!!
I find it so fun to have a special treat for Saint Patrick’s Day and this is a special one!
Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake
Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake with Irish Cream Glaze
Ingredients
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup freshly brewed black coffee
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups sugar
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup dutch process cocoa powder, plus more for dusting
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
irish cream glaze
- 3 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- ⅓ cup Irish cream liqueur
- 3 tablespoons water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12 cup bundt pan with nonstick baking spray (the kind of baking spray with flour!) and then sprinkle in a few tablespoons of dutch process cocoa powder. Shake it all over and around the inside of the bundt pan. This will take a few minutes because you want every bit covered! Tap the excess cocoa out of the pan.
- Set aside 1 cup of buttermilk (or 1 cup milk + 1 teaspoon vinegar) and 1 cup of freshly brewed coffee.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Pour in the buttermilk and coffee and mix on low speed until the mixture is combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and powder. Add it to the wet ingredients in the mixer. Beat until combined, scraping down the sides and the bottom of the bowl. Beat the mixture on medium speed for 4 to 5 full minutes, scraping down the sides a few times.
- Once it’s ready, pour it into the bundt pan. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool for 30 minutes, then very carefully invert the pan and let the cake finish cooling on a wire rack or cake plate. Let it cool completely.
irish cream glaze
- Whisk together the chocolate and powdered sugar in a bowl.
- Heat the irish cream liqueur and water in a saucepan over medium heat until it’s just hot and bubbles are around the edge. Do not let it boil and evaporate! Pour the hot liquid over the chocolate/sugar mixture and whisk continuously.
- You want to whisk until the sugar lumps are gone and the chocolate is melted. This glaze can thicken quickly, so the minute it is smooth, pour it over the cake and let it set. Do not wait! One the glaze sets for 10 minutes or so, slice and serve the cake!
Did you make this recipe?
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24 Comments on “Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake with Irish Cream Glaze.”
Looks delicious, can’t wait to try. Wondering if would scale down ok for a 6 cup bundt pan ? (presume this recipe uses the larger 10 cup)
Good flavor but a bit – just a bit dry. I suspect it was that I used the buttermilk from a can convenience. Next time it’s a run to the store for the real thing.
In the instructions for the glaze, you add water to it?
Doesn’t that make it seize ??
I thought water was the enemy of chocolate?
Please correct me if I am wrong?
this glaze is originally from saveur and i had the same thought at first. but it works! i think since the liquid is hot and has more cream than water. plus, we’re not adding the water to melted chocolate, it’s chopped!
This looks amazing! My kind of cake. My question, what size bundt pan here, please?
12 cup bundt!
Hello,
This sounds great and I am excited to make it, but bundt pans come in many sizes. What size pan did you use?
this recipe is for a 12 cup bundt! it works best in a 12 cup.
however i have also made it in a 10 cup bundt pan. in the 10 cup, it will rise a lot more and have a puffier bottom and requires 10-15 mins more bake time
Thank you! Just a note to other folks considering making this – you need to chop the chocolate quite fine, otherwise it will not all melt and you will have lumps of chocolate in your your frosting.
This cake is AMAZING. So moist and chocolatey. And the glaze is perfect. I will be making this cake often!
The only question I have is where did you get that gorgeous cake stand?
For the icing, do you use unsweetened chopped chocolate ? Or sweetened ?
The glaze doesn’t look anything like your photo,in colour or consistency. It was quite runny and much darker in colour. The taste was nice tho! I double checked your recipe to make sure I had correct amounts and followed instructions properly, and I did. If I tried this again, I think I’d let the glaze sit for a bit before pouring over the cake.
the color of the glaze will depend on the chocolate that you use! i used ghiraradelli and i believe it was 70% or even a little less.
I completely agree. The glaze doesn’t NOT thicken quickly. Even though I waited for the glaze to cool, there was a huge mess on my counter from runoff.
I checked on the cake at 45 minutes, 50, 55, etc, and am now up to about 77 minutes, and I still can’t get a clean toothpick. Did anyone else have a longer baking time?
do you know the cup size of your bundt pan?? i wonder if it is smaller?
Can I glaze the cake ahead of time- instead of right before serving. If so would I need to refrigerate?
This was THE BEST chocolate cake. I finished the batter and just knew I’d messed something up because it was thinner than I expected. BUT NO!!! It made the most delicious cake over ever had. Not too sweet, just perfect!! I didn’t have liqueur so used coffee and my glaze was too thin so I’ll use less coffee next time and it’ll be fine.
Fantastic I loved it.
This cake is so good!! I’m about to make it again but was wondering if there are any different instructions if I make it in 2 round pans for a layered cake. Obviously for a shorter time but would it work?
I made this for my family thanksgiving and it was a huge hit. I could not find Dutch processed cocoa powder but I just used the Ghirardelli’s 100% cocoa powder and still the same amount of baking soda and baking powder and it still tasted great. The glaze was tricky to pour onto the cake but tasted amazing!
I altered the glaze a bit. Instead of water, I used 2 Tablespoons of butter and 1 Tablespoon of cream. Wow!! Thanks for this recipe!
This cake is fabulous. My husband and I love it.
The cake and glaze are easy to make. However, your instructions about the glaze are misleading. The glaze doesn’t thicken all that quickly. There is no way it gets thick enough to resemble the photo that introduces the recipe. In fact, I think the glaze should have just a teaspoon of water, not 2 tablespoons.