This chocolate sour cream Bundt cake has a chocolatey intensity that’s old-fashioned in the best possible way, thanks to the intensity of cocoa powder. It’s also rather old-school in how it’s made, which is entirely by hand—no stand mixer required, which may make it a relic in the best possible way compared to all your other recipes.
Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake
Equipment
- 10- or 12-cup Bundt pan
Ingredients
For the cake
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
- 1/3 cup best-quality cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup cold water
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan
- 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the glaze
- 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
- 1 1/2 tablespoons agave nectar or light corn syrup
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Instructions
Make the chocolate sour cream Bundt cake
- Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat it to 350°F (180°C). Butter and flour a 10- or 12-cup Bundt pan.
- In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter, cocoa powder, salt, and water. Cook, stirring, just until the butter is melted and everything is thoroughly combined. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.
- Place the flour, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl and whisk until blended. Add half the melted butter mixture and whisk until completely blended. The mixture will be quite thick. Add the remaining melted butter mixture and whisk until combined. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, whisking until completely blended before adding the next egg. Then whisk in the sour cream and vanilla until smooth.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes and then invert it onto a wire rack. Let cool completely before glazing.
Make the glaze
- Just before glazing the cooled cake, place the chopped chocolate and agave nectar or corn syrup in a bowl. Combine the heavy cream and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly until the cream is hot and the sugar is dissolved. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. If the glaze is exceptionally runny, let it sit for a minute or so to thicken.
- Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake, allowing it to drip and dribble down the sides. Wait a little, if you can, until the glaze is set prior to slicing and serving and helping yourself to seconds.
Notes
Chocolate Sour Cream Cakes Of All Shapes and Size
The recipe is moist and lovely as a Bundt cake form but also translates marvelously to cakes of all shapes and sizes, including layer cakes and cupcakes. You’ll need to adjust the time spent in the oven accordingly; start checking the cake or cupcakes for doneness after 20 to 25 minutes and trust that when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out without any crumbs clinging to it, your cake is done and you can do your happy dance.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
This is a perfect chocolate sour cream Bundt cake! Easy—no mixer needed, really! The times are just right—40 minutes was perfect to cook the cake. The mixture is thick enough that you will need to scrape the bowl after pouring the batter in the Bundt pan. You will want to get every delicious drop. The chocolate glaze had a few tweaks that I hadn’t seen before, and the recipe will be my standard now, since it made such a beautiful shiny glaze. Unlike most baked goods, this cake was better the next day. A great recipe for beginners and experienced bakers alike. Next time I need to bring a dessert somewhere, this will be it.
This cake is pure indulgence but much more approachable than other desserts of this caliber due to the ease of making a Bundt cake and the familiarity of most of the ingredients. The recipe comes together quickly, in about 20 minutes. Make sure that you grease the Bundt pan generously. On my first try, a bit of the cake stuck to the pan because I wasn’t generous enough with my butter. The hardest part about this recipe is being patient enough to let it cool and applying the glaze, which is truly what makes it over-the-top delicious. Warning: if you aren’t a huge fan of chocolate, this probably isn’t the dessert for you.
This chocolate sour cream cake only lasted two days here. Everyone who tried it fell in love. My daughter even said she may want this one for her birthday cake this year. I was afraid after it was mixed up that it wouldn’t work since the batter was so thin. It was definitely a pouring batter and not a scraping one, at least for me. Never fear though: it baked up beautifully, and the bittersweet chocolate made the perfect topping for this super-moist and delicious cake. I opted to use corn syrup instead of agave nectar since I already had it on hand. This one goes in my “to make again and again” file.
I wanted to throw together a quick dessert to go with a roast chicken, and when I saw this chocolate sour cream Bundt cake recipe, I thought it looked pretty simple, so I made it. The batter is on the thin side, so it pours nicely out of the bowl—almost like a dense brownie batter. That is also how the cake turned out. While baking, the batter rose and then sunk in the middle, almost like a molten chocolate cake, but the texture was very dense in the finished product. Lots of chocolate flavor, and very moist. I confess that I didn’t make the glaze to go with it, and it wasn’t missed at all, as the cake is quite sweet and went very well with vanilla bean ice cream. Would also be very nice with a raspberry coulis or some other fruit. It was almost truffle-like in texture.
This chocolate sour cream Bundt is a “straight-A” cake. The batter is easy to mix with just a wooden spoon, and it pours nicely into the Bundt pan without a mess. (Have you tried putting dollops of thick cake batter neatly into a Bundt pan? Impossible.) The finished cake looks fancy and oh-so-appetizing, with the chocolate glaze maintaining its sheen and creaminess even after the cake has been “overnighted” in the refrigerator. And when you taste it, oh my, it’s delicious! The cake has a good cocoa flavor, and it slices clean, thanks to its texture that is just moist and sturdy enough. The foolproof chocolate glaze is addictively rich and luscious. You won’t want to waste any of it by drizzling it and letting the excess fall through the rack. Give it a minute or so, as the recipe suggests, and spread it all over the cake with a rubber spatula and swirl it with the back of a dinner spoon. There’s enough to cover the entire cake beautifully.
This chocolate Bundt cake turns out a lovely Bundt cake. Caution: When the recipe calls for adding half of the cocoa-butter mixture, the cake batter looks more like dough than batter. I’d recommend using a rubber scraper or spoon rather a whisk to stir during this part of the recipe. Once the other half of the cocoa mixture and eggs are added, the batter easily pours into the pan. The glaze recipe produces a perfectly rich topping for a cake with heavenly texture. The light sweetness of the cake and the bitter chocolate ganache-style glaze balance each other out. I thought there wouldn’t be enough cream for the glaze, but it was perfect. The cake came out tender, moist, and dense. It’s an ideal everyday cake or for company.
Imagine having everything in the house that you need to bake a cake and that you can bake it in minutes without dirtying the stand mixer. A good whisk will turn the ingredients into chocolate magic. This cake turns out a delicious, moist cake that’s reminiscent of a chocolate glazed cake donut when it’s complete. The batter is quickly mixed together and then poured into a pan. Cooled and topped with a delicious glaze, this looks as good as it tastes. I have to say mine rose in a strange way—it actually looked like a donut rose from the middle of my Bundt pan. It didn’t rise from the edges of the pan, just from the middle. Next time I would try milk chocolate for the glaze (just my personal preference). I used the agave nectar and wonder if it would taste any different if I’d used corn syrup. Have some cold milk ready—your tasters will want it!
This chocolate sour cream Bundt cake is absolutely amazing! As soon as I took the first bite, I wanted to jump up and make it again! The sour cream cuts the sweet taste just enough and makes it amazingly moist. It was simple to prepare and came out of the pan perfectly. I did have to bake it about 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for. The glaze did seem a little runny at first, but, as stated in the recipe, once it sat for a few minutes, it thickened up beautifully. This is a winner!
This chocolate sour cream Bundt cake is a very easy recipe to prepare; no mixer needed, and it’s based on very simple ingredients which are always available and aren’t very expensive in most countries. It takes just minutes from reading the recipe until the cake is in the oven, and it’s very easy to follow, even for beginners. The cake looks very elegant, and it’s nice to have it with an afternoon coffee or as a birthday cake served with this nice and tasty glaze on it. For us, it’s a keeper. Thanks!
I haven’t made a cake in years. I mean years. I don’t really like cake. I’d rather save my calories for other things. This Bundt cake recipe is the exception to that rule. This cake, I loved. Since I don’t make a lot of sweets (that is changing thanks to Leite’s), I was very aware of how well-written and easy to follow the recipe is. I like the way that every part of every step is explained so well. I knew what to do and what to expect. After whisking in the ingredients in all of the separate steps, the resulting batter had a beautiful silky, satiny, glossy sheen. I was able to pour a good deal of it into the prepared Bundt pan, but the rest did have to be scraped out of the bowl. I found that after 45 minutes in our oven, there was still a band of the cake that needed an extra 3 minutes in the oven. I took the cake out of the oven when a wooden skewer poked into the cake, in different places, came out clean. I was amazed at how easy the glaze was to make. It was also silky beautiful. The finished product had a moist, fudge-like texture in the very center. I did not want to put the cake back into the oven, because the rest of the cake was moist and wonderful. I did not want it to dry out. Even the overly moist center of the cake was very good, although I don’t think that that is the way the cake was supposed to turn out. I’d like feedback to see if anyone else had this problem with the recipe.
Wow. WOW! This chocolate sour cream Bundt cake recipe is so straightforward, and the results will have your family thanking you for slaving away in the kitchen all day. Let them be fooled! No need to let eggs and butter come to room temperature. No need to lug out your huge, heavy KitchenAid mixer. Just whisk to combine, toss into a pretty pan, and bake! I served this to my family with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream—desserts don’t get more special than that!
This is one great cake recipe. When you make this cake, you’ll be a star in the eyes of your friends and family. This cake is moist, beautiful, chocolatey, and most of all a very easy cake to make. Having made this a few times, I sometimes add 1/4 teaspoon espresso powder and have even been known to sift a bit of confectioners’ sugar over the cake instead of dribbling it with ganache. Whatever you do, this cake looks like it was made by a professional!
I made this cake—my favorite chocolate cake—for my own birthday yesterday. Because it’s my birthday and I can make my cake and eat it, too. I’ve been making this one for years because the intensity of the chocolate flavor is unparalleled, the moisture that the sour cream lends is unmistakable, and the departure in technique is just plain fun—rather than traditionally creaming butter and sugar together, the butter is first melted together with cocoa powder, then stirred into a sugar + flour mix. It’s hard not to eat a whole mess of the batter before pouring it into the bundt pan—or cupcake tins or cake pans, as I have done many times. This recipe lends itself beautifully to any shape pan, and pairs as well with a chocolate buttercream as it does with Leite’s luscious chocolate glaze. Do be sure to use high-quality dark chocolate for this glaze. This cake deserves it.
Mari, that cake is nothing short of stunning. Just stunning. And, oh, happy birthday!!!
This recipe reminded me of a cake my mom used to make when I was growing up in Israel. Just like that old recipe, there’s no need to soften butter (since it is melted with the cocoa powder) and there’s no need for a mixer. The whole cake comes together in no time. Not only that but the resulting cake is moist, deeply chocolatey, and that glaze adds a crowning glory! I chose to make it for a dinner party that came together at the last minute, since time was of the essence and the ingredients are some of what I normally have on hand. It did not disappoint. Beautiful, delicious, with a side trip to a childhood memory. This one goes in my recipe box! Thank you!
You’re so very welcome, Zehorit! Love your photo! Makes me want to drop everything and make this cake. And it’s amazing how food instantly takes us to another time and place, yes? Thank you for taking the time to let us know that you, too, find this recipe to be a keeper. And so glad it was able to bring back some memories of happiness. Looking forward to hearing which recipe on the site you try next…
This was the second-ever Bundt cake I’ve made and it couldn’t have been easier. I was so surprised by how easy the cake batter came together. Making a cake after work needs to be this easy! I baked it for exactly 40 minutes and it released from the pan perfectly. When I made the glaze it was so shiny and rich. It was thin upon first making but as if magic within a minute or two it thickened up. All of a sudden I thought to add the warm glaze to a plastic storage bag. I snipped off the end and applied the glaze that way so I could gauge how it would adhere to the cake and how much to use, I went back after using less than a cup and applied a second coat. I love how it drizzled down the sides but not too quickly that the serving platter had huge puddles of glaze around the cake. I brought it to a party and it was the first dessert to go. The cake sliced neatly and with smallish slices it served at least 15 to 20 people. On to bundt number three! The recipes on this site are foolproof if you’re organized and follow directions. I’d say this chocolate cake is perfect for beginner bakers….
Carlin, we’re so grateful to hear this cake works as magnificently for you as it does for us! And we’re thankful, too, that you took the time to let us know. We soooooo appreciate it! We do test all recipes in our home kitchens over and over and over again before deciding whether they’re spectacular enough to share on our site, and almost half the recipes we try fail to meet that criteria, so know that you can make anything from us with confidence. Looking forward to hearing what recipe you try next…!