Mega-Chocolate Mini-Bundts

This is one of my best holiday recipes. You can make it into a layer cake instead of little Bundts, make one large Bundt, or use cupcake pans (without muffin cups). (The mini-Bundt pans are like muffin tins.) The glaze won't work well for a layer cake; just use your favorite frosting. The origin of this recipe was a happy accident. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been and added twice the amount of cocoa powder to the Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe. Everyone loved it, so I made a few other changes, wrote it down and made it over and over. The coffee really makes the chocolate flavor pop. If you have a stand with a pedestal, use it for a nice presentation. 

• Cake ingredients
• 
  
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup hot brewed coffee

Heat oven to 350. Spray pans with Pam or other nonstick coating. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and milk and mix well at slow speed. In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture and coffee to the butter mixture, alternating between the two, and mix at slow speed. When everything is combined, mix at medium speed for two minutes. Pour into prepared pans of your choice (see above) and cook about twenty-five minutes (for the mini-Bundts; adjust timing for other types of pans). Check with a toothpick for doneness. Cool in pan on wire racks for ten minutes, then remove from pan.

Glaze ingredients

• One and a half cups hot brewed 
• coffee
• 8 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
• 3/4 cups sugar (or to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• pinch of salt

Pour coffee into medium saucepan and add chocolate. Keep heat very low! Stir several times as chocolate melts. Add remaining ingredients and cook until mixture begins to thicken. (It will thicken more as it cools.) Cool slightly. You can be creative with glazing and display; here's how I do it: Stack cakes in a pyramid on the cake pedestal. Slowly pour or spoon glaze over each layer, letting it pool on the bottom of the plate and drizzle down to the layer below. If you use the mini-Bundt pans, you'll notice that the glaze puddles in the indentations on the tops of the cakes. Garnish with berries, whipped cream, or whatever strikes your fancy.