Easy chocolate wine cake

Easy and surprising. That is how we like it here at surprising.recipes. So, an easy chocolate wine cake fits perfectly into the concept. An easy chocolate cake, with the surprising ingredient red wine. You read it right: the surprising ingredient of the day is red wine. It pairs perfectly with chocolate in this easy chocolate wine cake.

How to make this easy chocolate wine cake?

This easy chocolate wine cake is really not difficult to make. We also keep the concept pure, so no fancy icing or complex decoration. You can, of course, add those as you wish. But we're going for the basic cake here, which you can then garnish up to your own convenience. You can read more about the garnishing options later on.

We always start by preparing and weighing the ingredients. Just to make sure that you have all the ingredients at home, and in the right quantities. Not that you get stuck halfway just because of that. It happened to me once, so I learned from it.

We start with the dry ingredients. They can go straight into the mixing bowl. We stir them well with the whisk, so that they are well mixed. In this case the dry ingredients are the plain flour, the baking powder, sugar, vanilla sugar, cocoa and cinnamon.

Meanwhile, we can slowly melt the butter in a saucepan. Make sure the butter doesn't boil, but it should melt completely. While the butter is melting, we separate the whites and yellows of the eggs. After the butter has melted, we take the pan off the heat and mix in the egg yolks. Beat these well, and then we can mix them with the dry ingredients.

Next we mix the red wine under the dough. Mix everything well until you have a consistent dough. In the meantime we can turn on the oven and let it preheat to 180°C. And we also grease the mold with butter.

In the last step we then beat the egg white until it is completely stiff. We then add it to the dough. With the spatula we carefully fold it under the dough, so that the structure remains intact. When the egg white has completely mixed with the dough, we can pour it into the mold. Make sure that the dough is evenly distributed over the mold. Then the mold can be baked in the oven for half an hour.

After half an hour, check whether the dough is ready. Do this with a knitting needle or a skewer. Stick it in the easy chocolate wine cake. If no dough sticks to it, it is ready. Then you can take it out of the oven and let it cool down. After five to ten minutes it will have cooled down enough to safely open the spring form and remove the cake.

Finishing the easy chocolate wine cake

As you can see in the photos, we have opted for the simplest finish here: sprinkle with icing sugar. Less is more. I still love this one the most.

But of course there are other options. A very, very big dash of whipped cream, for example. You cannot do anything wrong with that either. Another option is finishing with chocolate glaze. Personally, I think that's a bit too much of chocolate. The pure and sweeter taste of the chocolate glaze slightly supplants the fruitiness of the red wine. And in the right season you can also finish heartily with red fruits, such as blackberries, raspberries, red currants, blueberries or cherries.

Which wine should I use for this easy chocolate wine cake?

As mentioned in the beginning, red wine is really a must for this chocolate wine cake. It pairs perfectly with the chocolate and gives a delicious flavor to the cake. But which wine should I use?

Well, I prefer a dry red wine with a strong taste. It must be able to stand up against the other ingredients. Therefore a sweet wine is not immediately the best option. There's enough sugar in the cake already. Rather, we want a more powerful fruity flavor that combines well with the other components. That's why I don't think Porto or any other dessert wine is the best choice here. But tastes obviously differ. But to be specific, somehow I always end up with a Merlot or a Syrah. Those are my favorite wines and grapes. And preferably from Les Jamelles. But above all, be free to make your own choice there.

More surprising.chocolate

Chocolate can be a really surprising ingredient in many recipes. Are you interested? Then have a look at the following recipe ideas:

• Melting pot of chocolate and Baileys. (The best dessert ever).
• Mexican style chocolate chicken.
• Stale croissant chocolate pudding.
• Pistachio chocolate banana sushi.
• Black Belgian waffles, Black Forest style.

More surprising.cake

Do you also love these Sunday cakes with a twist? Then you might want to make the following cakes during the next weeks:

• Pineapple marzipan cake.
• Biscoff pear pie.
• Greek walnut cake.
• Gin-tonic cake.
• Cherry coconut cake.

If you speak Dutch, you can find the Dutch version of this recipe on gerechtenweb.blog.