Chocolate Coffee Bundt Cake

Medically reviewed by Christiana George Updated Date: June 8, 2023

What kind of cake do you bake for a friend who doesn’t like cake? Or dessert for that matter? She’s a girl (aww, woman now!) with peculiar tastes. She’ll buy half a watermelon and a pack of deli meat for dinner, and eat it all with generous scoops of chili garlic sauce. She hates eating fruit in any form except raw. She doesn’t like her veggies. She used to buy a stick of salami everyday after school.

Her one weakness is coffee ice cream, which I took advantage of. Or tried to, rather. I had lofty plans. I was going to make a coffee ice cream cake, with six alternating layers of brownie in between. But then I failed, TWICE, at making the ice cream. So I plowed forward instead with this chocolate coffee bundt cake, courtesy of Big Sur Bakery, via Miss Joy. And I decided to freeze the ice cream anyway—it was a Jeni’s Splendid recipe, and looked absolutely amazing on Megan’s blog. It doesn’t taste quite right, more toffee-flavored than coffee-flavored, but maybe people will believe me if I tell them it’s toffee ice cream?

Anyway, you’ll notice there are no pictures of cake slices. I couldn’t cut it open; I mean, wouldn’t that be wrong? A violation of some basic human right to receive an intact cake on one’s birthday? Chris asked if there was any way to cut a slice and weld the piece back in—what misconceptions there exist about baking—but I’m not aware of this being possible. (Is it possible?)

So, a happy happy birthday to one of my best friends in the world! She turns 26 today, and I’ve officially known her for half my life. Whew! Although by the time you read this, her birthday will have passed. Now off to celebrate. A cake report to follow.

The next day: Good cake, great ice cream, and perfect company! I won’t post the ice cream recipe for the reason mentioned above, but the cake, now the cake, is one I should spread the word about.

CHOCOLATE COFFEE BUNDT CAKE

Recipe from Big Sur Bakery via Joy the Baker

Makes one 10-inch bundt cake

Ingredients:

1-1/4 cups plus 1 Tbsp brewed coffee
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder (Note: I used regular)
2-1/4 cups sugar
1-1/4 tsp kosher salt
2-1/2 tsp baking soda
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
1-1/4 cups plus 1 Tbsp buttermilk
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp canola oil
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups, plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour, sifted

Directions:

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

Well grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan and set aside (Note: I used a 9-inch Bundt pan and there was definitely too much batter. Go with the 10″).

Put brewed coffee and cocoa powder in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, whisking frequently. Remove from the heat and let come to room temperature.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fit with a whisk attachment, mix together sugar, salt, baking soda, eggs and egg yolk on low speed for about 1 minute. Add the buttermilk, oil and vanilla extract and mix on low again for another minute. Add the flour and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add the cooled cocoa mixture and mix on medium speed for 3 minutes. The batter will be very loose.

Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for 1 hour, or until a cake tester inserted in the cake comes out clean (Note: I baked it for 70 minutes). Let the cake cool completely in the pan and then invert onto a cooling rack. Decorate with powdered sugar and serve with ice cream.

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Korean Fried Chicken

Mains

Christiana George

Updated Date:
January 2, 2026

I have had the most incredible hankering for Korean food recently. I can’t explain it, except that this current weather makes me want to cuddle up with a bowl of soondubu and freshly cooked rice, made in a stone pot of course. I also just recently discovered Maangchi, who is just about the cutest woman alive other than my mom. They remind me an awful lot of each other actually.

Maangchi doesn’t do anything in half measures, meaning everything she cooks is in huge quantities. She whips out 10 pounds of kimchi at a time, fries huge basins of japchae. I can’t imagine the number of people she cooks for, but in the case of the recipe I’m sharing today, she deep-fried three pounds of chicken wings. For Chris and me, two to three wings/drumettes each, so maybe half a pound of chicken total, is sufficient. Although maybe we’re just light eaters. It’s hard to say.

But hold it! I’m misleading you, aren’t I? I actually didn’t end up following Maangchi’s recipe. It was pretty good, but I found that I preferred Saveur’s version better. The two taste totally different; I just found her version to be a bit cloying. (Also, I don’t understand why corn syrup seems to end up in a lot of Korean dishes—is it a common ingredient? And why?)

What the two versions have in common—and what makes Korean fried chicken so dang addictive—is that the chicken is fried twice. This results in a Seriously Crispy Crust. It’s the difference between a weak handshake and a firm one, sallow and sturdy. A robust crust, if you will. I think it’s dead simple and pretty genius. (The only downside is that you have to withstand being barraged by oil twice as long. Actually, come to think of it, that’s a pretty big downside. Deep-frying is freaky. Make sure you wear long sleeves. And gloves. And clear everything away around the perimeter of the pot because it’s going to get dirty.) And then you smother it in a hot-garlicky-mouth-puckering sauce and away you go!

(On an unrelated note, if you follow me on Instagram, you might know that I was in California last week, where I got to meet the newest generation of the Anderson clan, aka Chris’s brother’s four-and-a-half month old son and our nephew! I get a little giddy calling him this, because it didn’t really occur to me that he WAS related to me until Chris’s sister-in-law [which makes her my sister-in-law?] called me Aunt Linda. Aunt Linda! That’s so exciting! And now that I’ve seen him and fallen in love, I want to buy him things like this onesie. What do you think? Isn’t it adorable?? [Now my mom thinks I want to start popping them out. Ha. Ha ha ha. Sorry Mom. You’ll have to give me time.])

KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN (aka KFC)

From Saveur

Makes 16 pieces

Ingredients:

5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 (1.5″) piece peeled ginger, chopped
3 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp gochujang
1.5 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp Asian sesame oil
1 Tbsp honey
2/3 cup flour
1 Tbsp cornstarch
2/3 cup water
16 chicken wingettes/drumettes (from 8 chicken wings)
Canola oil, for frying
Sesame seeds and chopped green onions for topping

Directions:

Make the sauce: process the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, gochujang, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and honey with a food processor/immesion blender until blended (or mince the garlic and ginger and whisk the ingredients together by hand).

For the chicken: in a bowl, whisk the flour, corn starch, and water. Add the chicken and toss. In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed pot, pour about 2 inches of oil. Clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pot and heat the oil until it reaches a temperature of 350 degrees F. Add the chicken pieces gently, but don’t crowd the pot; you’ll have to work in two or three batches. Fry chicken until golden, about 6 to 8 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Reheat the oil to 350 degrees and fry chicken again until crisp and medium brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain.

In a large bowl, toss the chicken pieces with the sauce, top with sesame seeds and green onions if using, and serve. With lots of napkins.