Recipe For Tunnel Of Fudge

A cople of you have asked for the Tunnel Of Fudge recipe - so here it is as Melissa Gray from NPR wrote it in her wonderful book "All Cakes Considered". If you love to bake this is one one wonderful book of cakes !


Tunnel of Fudge Cake

This is the recipe Pillsbury offers for the prize-winning cake that started the bundt pan revolution. It is not exactly the same as Ella Helfrich’s because Pillsbury stopped making the double dutch fudge buttercream frosting mix she used in the original. Now you have to make the whole cake from scratch. Nuts are essential to the cake’s success. A "tunnel of fudge" mysteriously appears in the finished cake. This does make it tough to use the usual toothpick method of determining doneness

Cake
1 ¾ cups sugar
1 ¾ cups butter or margarine, softened
6 eggs
2 cups powdered sugar
2 ¼ cups all purpose or unbleached flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa ( NOT dutch processed. very important!)
2 cups chopped walnuts
Glaze
¾ cup powdered sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
4-6 tsp. milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan (or a 10-inch tube pan). In a large bowl, combine sugar and butter or margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar; blend well. By hand, stir in flour and remaining cake ingredients until well blended. Spoon batter into greased and floured pan and spread evenly.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until top is set and edges are beginning to pull away from sides of pan. Cool upright in pan on wire rack 1 ½ hours. Invert onto serving plate and cool at least 2 hours.

In small bowl, combine glaze ingredients, adding enough milk for desired drizzling consistency. Spoon over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Store tightly covered.

Tunnel Of Fudge: A Seriously Good Cake

First off let me say that I have not been as static lately as my blog might seem to indicate! I have been making cards that needed to be sent off and, in my haste, I forgot to photograph them. I have been working on a knitted shawl in the evenings and  ripped it all out two days ago because I did not like the way it looked and have started again. I've been reading a lot too! Project wise I have one more largeish project to finish this coming weekend and then I can get back to journaling and sewing without guilt!

I had had this recipe for a "Tunnel of Fudge Cake" marked to experiment with and yesterday was the day I finally did try the recipe. WoW ! This really is a wonderful cake. Very rich and remarkably simple. It's from "All Cakes Considered" by Melissa Gray. I love this cook book and reviewed it on my book blog some time ago.  The cake won a $5,000 prize in 1966 (worth, it was noted, $30,000. in today's coin).  The chemistry of eggs and sugar combine to make a tunnel of fudge that runs through the middle of the cake.  It would be a perfect special occasion cake. My friends at work loved it too - and DH thought it was mighty fine

Below: The recipe as it looks in the book

you can double click remember!

 

This is what the NPR website has to say about Melissa Gray and her cakes:

"October 26, 2009 ....Just about every Monday, All Things Considered producer Melissa Gray dashes off an e-mail that reads something like this: "Up front we've got sweet potato pound cake, still warm. Dig in, don't be shy." That goes without saying. When Gray started bringing cakes into the office, she discovered the staff will eat just about anything. Her adventures in baking, and the staff's adventures in eating what she created, are recounted in a new cookbook called All Cakes Considered: A Year's Worth of Weekly Recipes Tasted, Tested, and Approved by the Staff of All Things Considered...."

Below: The cover of this remarkable book

This sort of Bundt pan would be nice to have- I like the design it makes. The recipe calls for an 8" Bundt pan but all I had was a 9" - worked fine.

Below: The cake as it appears in the book.