Red Wine Cake (Rotweinkuchen)

Red wine and dark chocolate. What a decadent combination. These are the two stand out ingredients in this luscious red wine cake. There’s also a touch of cinnamon that edges the flavour into a slightly more “spiced” realm. With it’s somewhat dense texture and boozy red wine icing, I consider this cake to be more of a Sunday or company cake. It’s perfect for something like coffee and cake affair on a weekend afternoon.

Everyone needs a Coffee and Cake Club

We recently started going to a coffee and cake club hosted by a friend of mine. She says that it’s my brain child since I threw the idea out there after we came back from Germany. However, since she and her husband are always gracious enough to host, I feel she deserves more of the credit. Anyway, I’ve taken this cake two times in a row now and it’s gone over well bpth times. That just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy! I’m glad that it only took me one try (first bake was just the original recipe) to get an adjusted recipe that worked seemed for everyone.

By the way, I highly recommend that everyone start a coffee and cake club. Why? Well, why not? It’s a great reason to get together with folks, drink coffee and eat cake in the late afternoon. Also, it’s a very much a German social tradition. It’s a time to gather with friends and/or family on Sunday afternoons, share good conversation and just enjoy each other. Where my family’s from in Germany, if company comes to visit, it’s in the afternoon and you serve coffee and cake. The other reason, and one that I adore, is simply that it’s an excellent place to try out new cake recipes. I don’t know about you but I don’t bake as many cakes as I would like because a whole cake for two people is a lot.

Baking with Wine

There seems to be a school of thought out there that says not to cook with a quality wine. I disagree with this wholeheartedly, especially in regards to this cake. Bake with a nice wine that you enjoy to drink. It’s that simple. While you’re at it, why not pour a glass for the cake and one for yourself? I can almost guarantee it’ll make the baking that much more fun.

The reason for using a quality wine (by your personal standards) has more to do with the fact that the flavour of the wine really does come through in both the cake and most definitely in the icing. Just smell it when it’s fresh out of the oven. Sweet reds are a great choice for this cake but you can experiment with whatever is your favourite. I always use a simple Pinot Noir for no other reason than it’s our red wine of choice when we want to kick back with a glass (or two).

For a little more information about cooking (baking) with wine, there’s a great little article over at Cooking Light that’s aptly titled Cooking with Wine.

“If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one.”

– Julia Child

Red Wine Cake

(Rotweinkuchen)

Ingredients:

Cake:

• 2 sticks + 2 tablespoons of room temperature Butter
• 1 cup of Sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons of Vanilla Sugar (or 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract)
• 1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
• Pinch of Salt
• 4 room temperature Eggs
• 1 3/4 cups (or 8.8oz) of Flour
• 1 tablespoon of Dark Chocolate Cocoa
• 5 teaspoons (or 0.5 oz) of Baking Powder
• 3/4 of a cup of Red Wine
• 2 oz (or more) of chopped Dark Chocolate

Glaze:

• 3/4 cup of Powdered Sugar
• 1 – 2 tablespoons of Red Wine

Tip 1: For a more traditional texture to the red wine cake, feel free to add in 1/4 of a cup of raisins or dried cranberries to the batter when you add in the dark chocolate pieces. I don’t know anyone, including myself, that is a fan of dried fruit in cakes, so I always leave this part out. Doesn’t mean that you have to, though!

Tip 2: Try subbing 1/3 of the flour for ground almonds. It makes the cake a little moister and therefore, a little shorter but the flavour with the wine and dark chocolate is really nice.

Tip 3: If you’re like me and have a hard time remembering to put the butter and eggs out in advance so they’ll get to room temperature before you start your baking, Jamie over at the My Baking Addiction food blog has a great post on this. There you’ll find information on how to achieve the right temperature in a fairly short amount of time. I used the eggs in warm water trick for this post.

Tip 4: Flour is  tricky to convert from grams into cups because different brands of all purpose flour can weigh out differently. To be honest, weighing out the amounts for baking is better anyway. If you happen to a scale, go for 8.8 oz or 250 grams. The flour I used for this was from a local company called Stone-Buhr and 8.8oz measured out to 1 + 5/8 cups, which was too complicated so I rounded up by 1/8.

Okay, let’s get this red wine cake party started!

Let’s start by greasing a bundt pan with butter and dusting the butter layer with flour. Mine here has a 10″ diameter.  You can just use a butter straight from the stick on a paper towel or wax paper, or you can melt the butter and paint it on with a basting brush.

Chop the dark chocolate it into small pieces with a large knife.

You know, I don’t think that using more than 2 ounces would really hurt anything. Next time I make this I’m going to make it 3.

I have this adorable set of mini measuring spoons that I love to break out sometimes I need a pinch of salt for baking. They measure out tad, dash, pinch, smidgen and a drop. It just makes it seem more official! I picked these up at a local, little kitchen store, but I recently found them on Amazon.com. Aren’t they just the cutest?

Put the room temperature butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, cinnamon and that pinch of salt into a large bowl and mix with a hand mixer on medium for 6 minutes until it’s nice and creamy.

A stand mixer would work here too but sometimes I feel like using my large Mason Cash bowl. I’m currently coveting the red one since my yellow one broke a few months ago.

Crack in one room temperature egg in at a time. Mix until thoroughly combined before adding the next egg.

Here’s what the batter should look like after all 4 eggs have been added and mixed.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder using a hand sifter or mesh strainer onto wax paper or parchment paper. This not only mixes the dry ingredients thoroughly but it also provides a little extra air for the cake.

Slide the dry ingredient mixture into the large bowl and pour in the 3/4 cup of red wine. Stir gently until everything is thoroughly combined.

Add the chocolate pieces to the batter and fold in gently.

Spoon the batter into the prepared bundt pan and we’re ready for baking!

Bake this is a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 – 50 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Leave the cake in the pan and let it cool for 10 minutes on a wire cooling rack before trying to get it out.

Put on your oven mitts again because the pan is still pretty darn warm. Gently tip the bundt pan over and the cake should come out easily. If not, let it rest upside for a minute or two so it can get a little steam and try again with a little shake. If that doesn’t do it, gently work the edges with a rubber spatula.

Mine has yet to come out of the pan 100% perfect but I’m totally okay with this look. Going to cover most of it with icing anyhow.

Once the cake is cooled, make the red wine sugar icing. Simply stir together the powdered sugar and red wine in a bowl until the two combine into a nice, pink icing. We want it thin enough to that it’ll easily pour off the spoon but too thin where it’ll run off too much once it’s on the cake.

There you have it. Luscious red wine cake ready for company.

Except we’re not expecting any company, so I guess we’ll have to eat this ourselves. Hey, want to come over and help us eat up this red wine cake?

As always,

und Alles Liebe,
Diony

5 from 2 votes

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Red Wine Cake (Rotweinkuchen)

Wine and dark chocolate make a decadent combination for this Red Wine Cake. It's luscious, refined and perfect with coffee on Sunday afternoons.

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 55 minutes

Author The Kitchen Maus

Ingredients

Cake

• 2 sticks + 2 tablespoons of room temperature Butter
• 1 cup of Sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons of Vanilla Sugar or 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
• 1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
• Pinch of Salt
• 4 room temperature Eggs
• 1 3/4 cups or 8.8oz of Flour
• 1 tablespoon of Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder
• 5 teaspoons or 0.5 oz of Baking Powder
• 3/4 of a cup of Red Wine
• 2 oz or more of chopped Dark Chocolate

Red Wine Glaze

• 3/4 cup of Powdered Sugar
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of Red Wine

Instructions

1. Grease a bundt pan with butter and dust with flour.
2. Add butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer on medium for 6 minutes until creamy. Add one egg at a time, mixing each egg until thoroughly incorporated before adding the next. Set aside.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder with a hand sifter or mesh sieve onto parchment paper. Pour dry mixture into wet ingredients and add the wine. Stir gently until combined. Add dark chocolate pieces and fold in gently.
4. Spoon batter into prepared bundt pan and bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 - 50 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Leave cake in pan for 10 minutes on a wire cooling rack. Remove cake from pan and let it cool completely before adding the icing.
5. For the sugar glaze, stir together powdered sugar and red wine until there are no more lumps and icing is evenly pink. Spoon over cooled cake.

Recipe Notes

For a more traditional texture to the red wine cake, feel free to add in 1/4 of a cup or raisins or dried cranberries to the batter when you add in the dark chocolate pieces.
For a slightly more moist cake texture, sub 1/3 of the flour with ground almonds.

Adapted from Essen & Trinken

 Another cake recipe for you to enjoy!

Marble Cake (Marmorkuchen)

Disclosure: The Kitchen Maus may be compensated in exchange for your clicking on links posted within this page. It’s usually not much more than a cup of coffee and it’s never for products that we don’t use personally.