This Maple Brown Sugar Bundt Cake encapsulates autumn with soothing and warming flavors of brown sugar, maple, espresso, and chocolate!
This Maple Brown Sugar Bundt Cake marks an anniversary of sorts. I remember the release of this recipe in the 2007 issue of Bon Appetite. It’s weird to realize that ten years lapsed between then and now. That’s a solid chunk of time, yet I can’t discern nor describe those years.
Adjustments this time around were minor. Using a ratio of half butter and half oil yields a bundt cake that’s ideally moist and stays that way. You may think the maple extract is extraneous, but it cannot be swapped out with maple syrup. The subtle floral and woody notes of fresh maple syrup get lost in the baking process. The extract hold up against the competing flavors of brown sugar and chocolate. Make sure you don’t free style the pouring of maple extract, it’s not like vanilla extract, you need to measure it out and you don’t need a lot of it.
Poking holes into the top of the just-from-the-oven Maple Brown Sugar Bundt Cake and pouring a third of the glaze on top ensures a moist cake with flavors that are more evenly distributed. You’ll get some of that espresso flavor into the center of the cake, which is absolutely essential!
Recipes like this–that we use through the years–are the closest things we have to time travel. It sets us back into time and place in ways you can’t do with pictures and words. The actions of measuring ingredients, mixing the batter, and slicing into the molten bundt cake creates something discernibly wonderful. It doesn’t take much, to remember and acknowledge these moments.
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- For the Cake:
- 1 12-ounce package semisweet chocolate chips
- 3 cups all purpose flour, divided
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
- 2 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon maple extract
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- For the Glaze:
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
- 2 to 4 tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
- pinch of salt
- Preheat oven to 325°F. Spray bundt can with baking spray, set aside.
- Mix chocolate chips with 2 tablespoons flour in medium bowl. In a medium bowl, sift remaining flour with baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Using electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter, oil, and brown sugar in large bowl until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla extract and maple extract. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- With mixer on low, add flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Fold in floured chocolate chips. Pour batter to prepared pan, spreading evenly.
- Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out mostly clean and cake begins to pull away from sides of pan, about 1 hour. Let cake cool in pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Invert cake onto rack. Poke holes in cake and pour 1/3 glaze over warm cake. Cool completely.
- Whisk powdered sugar, maple syrup, 2 tablespoons cream, and espresso powder in medium bowl. Mix until smooth and lump free. If too loose, add more cream, a 1/2 teaspoonful at a time. Spoon remaining 2/3 glaze over top of cake; let stand at room temperature until glaze is firm, about 1 hour.