The Avenging Dark Chocolate Bacon Scourge Bundt of Doom

As many of you know, November 15 is National Bundt Cake Day.  Last year, I participated in an online roundup put together by a food blogger who then turned around and did something I find not only completely uncool and unforgivable, but also not at all in keeping with the spirit of something as fun and frivolous as the celebration of Bundt.

Seriously.  It’s a day dedicated to cake.  We’re not curing cancer here.  We’re not engaged in a particularly noble pursuit with lasting benefits to all mankind.  We’re just baking some fucking cakes.

So the bad taste left over from last year’s NBCD celebration, combined with the fact that apparently I don’t get to see any damn hockey this year, put me in rather a more violent mood than is my usual when I’m about to make a cake.  I didn’t want anything light, or fluffy, or fruity or delicate or anything that indicated in any way whatsoever that a nice person had baked it.  I wanted a cake I could kill someone with if I had to.  I wanted this year’s Bundt offering to both wipe out the distaste of last year’s, and provide at least some of the emotional satisfaction I usually get from watching large sweaty men on skates beating the crap out of each other several times a week during the winter months.

This year’s Bundt was all about blood, bruises, and vengeance.  And chocolate.

And bacon.

The Avenging Dark Chocolate Bacon Scourge Bundt of Doom

6 strips bacon
1 cup butter
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup hot water
1/2 tsp instant espresso OR 1 packet Starbucks Via Italian Roast
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook bacon on medium high until crisp.  Remove bacon from pan and set aside to cool on paper towels.  Strain fat through a paper towel or coffee filter (you should have about 1/4 cup) into a medium saucepan.  Add butter and chocolate chips, melt over low heat until smooth.  Set aside to cool.

Dissolve instant espresso or Via in hot water.  Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, combine brown sugar and eggs.  Mix on low until smooth and slightly foamy, about 1 minute.

Add vanilla, salt, baking soda, and coffee mixture, and stir until smooth.  Sift cocoa powder and flour into bowl, stir until danger of mixer causing huge cloud of flour and cocoa powder has passed, then mix on low for 1 minute.

Check butter/chocolate mixture.  It should be merely warmish by now.  Add to bowl, and mix on low until smooth.

Retrieve 4 of your 6 strips of bacon, crumble them finely, and stir them into the cake batter.  Pour batter into a greased Bundt pan and bake for 45 minutes.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto plate and allow to cool while you make the glaze.

Glaze

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tbsp milk

Combine chocolate chips and corn syrup in a small saucepan and melt over medium-low heat.  Remove pan from heat, add milk and stir until smooth.

Drizzle over cake while both are still warm.  Retrieve remaining two strips of bacon and crumble them over the glaze.

Eat cake.  Make no attempt to restrain sinister laughter while doing so.  List enemies and plot revenge.  Wish you could eat a second piece of cake.  Which you can’t.  Because, seriously, this thing almost killed me.  It is that evil.

 
 
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