Nutella Swirl Bundt Cake

For Christmas this year, one of the gifts my parents got me was a bundt pan! I've been wanting one for awhile, and saving up recipes for when I finally got one. I also did a little pinterest hunting for more recipes too so that I could get as much out of the pan as possible!

And with my lifelong love of Nutella, I stumbled across a Nutella Swirl Bundt Cake, and that sprang to the top of my baking list! Now mine was baked in a 10 cup bundt pan. The recipe I had was for a 6 cup one, so I did 1.5 of the recipe for 9 cups of batter. However, the one problem with this was that it didn't quite fill my pan the way it would have had it been the better amount of batter, but what can you do? So if you have a 6 cup or 12 cup, just do the math accordingly!

Start with 2 cups cake flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

In your electric mixer, beat 12 tablespoons softened butter with 1.5 cup sugar. You'll want to beat it for about three minutes under it's nice and fluffy.

Then after scraping down the bowl, add 1.5 tsp vanilla extract.

And three large eggs, one at a time, mixing for about 20 seconds between each addition.

You'll then add 3/4 cup milk and the flour into the batter. You'll want to alternate...starting with milk and ending with flour, and divide everything into thirds to make sure it's all well incorporated.

Now to create the Nutella swirl part of the cake!

You'll want to mix about 1/2 a cup of Nutella (I guestimated whether or not that was 1/2 a cup) with one egg to loosen up the nutella so it's easy to combine with some batter.

You'll then want to mix about 1/3 of your cake batter with the Nutella/egg mixture. I accidentally poured too much in with the Nutella, but oh well, that just means the Nutella section was bigger!

Then after spraying your pan with Baking Joy so it'll be easy to pop the cake out in the end, you'll layer a section of plain batter, then Nutella batter, and then the last of the plain batter.

And then take a knife and create the swirl!

You'll want to bake it at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes (until a knife stuck in the cake comes out clean) and cool it in the pan for 15 minutes before popping it out and letting it finish cooling on a rack!

I didn't get a good angle of it, but my cake puffed up kind of funny on the "bottom" part, so it looked a little like a UFO!

Mmmm just look at that swirl! I brought some to some of my friends, and then took the rest of the cake to work. I take the fact that it all pretty much disappeared by 10 in the morning as a good sign that it was delicious to people other than me!

Behind the Scenes Baking

One of my most wonderful friends, Nichole, is starting her own event planning business. You should really check out her blog, http://www.sweetcarolinablog.com/, and follow it! To get started and show off her skills, she's doing an inspiration shoot, and she's enlisted my baking skills to help her with a few items. Now, I won't tell you what these items are being used for (you'll have to read her blog for that!), but I will show you what I made and how I made them!

First up, I made three dozen donuts. Yup. Three dozen. It's a lot of donuts, but it actually was super simple to do. Since I wasn't worried about taste for these, I just went with the simplest recipe I could find, which happened to be the one that came with my donut pan. I only had to make the batch three times, but since I only have a six cavity pan, I was taking it in and out of the oven 6 times. Phew! It's a lot of baking but it's worth it.

 You want to use cake flour to get that nice cakey texture in the donuts. I combined 2 cups cake flour, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp salt. I whisked the dry ingredients together in my stand mixer bowl.

I then added two slightly beaten eggs.

As well as 3/4 cup buttermilk and 2 tablespoons melted butter.

You just have to mix the ingredients together for about 30 seconds until they're combined.

Then you fill the donut cavities about 2/3 full.

You bake the donuts at 425 for about 8 minutes, when the top of the donuts spring back when you touch them. And then you have donuts!

Lots and lots of donuts!

Now my second project for Nichole was heart shaped marshmallows. I had seen a tutorial on Martha Stewart where she provides instructions on how to make marshmallows and then cut shapes out. This actually ended up being a little more complicated than it was made out to be, so using a little internet research halfway through, I think I got a final product that should work.

You start by pour 1/6 cup of cold water into the mixer bowl, and pour a packet of unflavored gelatin onto the water. You'll let that sit for five minutes.

Then in a saucepan over medium-high heat, you'll want to bring to a boil 3/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup light corn syrup, 1/16 tsp salt, and 1/6 cup water.

 You'll want to let this boil for about five minutes.

Then, with the whisk attachment on your mixer, start mixing the gelatin/water mixture on low speed, and slowly pour in syrup (very slowly so you don't splatter).

And then, once all the syrup is poured in, gradually turn it up to a high speed, and let it beat for about 12 minutes. You'll then see the mixture transform, double in size and turn white like marshmallows!

The hardest part, because it was sooooooooooo sticky, was getting it onto the cookie sheet. I should have sprayed my parchment paper a little more (and maybe should have used wax paper instead), and it might have been a little easier, but I was able to get a good enough glob on to be able to make the marshmallows later on.

I let this sit for about 6 hours to harden up, but you can wait anywhere between 3 hours and overnight if you want. Now, this is where I got into a little predicament. I couldn't figure out how to cut out the marshmallows! It was so sticky and was not cooperating with me still. So after some internet research, I discovered a technique that others have used in the past. I poured a whole lot of confectioner's sugar on the counter, laid down the marshmallow on top of it, and then slooooowly peeled off the parchment paper, using confectioner's sugar to cover the underside as I pulled it off. And then after dipping my little cookie cutter in a thin layer of vegetable oil, I was able to cut out a little heart! I then covered them completely in confectioner's sugar to seal in the stickiness.

I'm hoping these will work for their purpose, but I guess we'll have to see!

If you haven't already, start following Nichole's blog, and I'll let you know what happens with the final product of what these items were used for!