THB: Cheese-Swirled Chocolate Bundt Cake

Early last month I made black-bottom cupcakes for ABC which were moist and intensely chocolatey cupcakes with luscious cream cheese and chocolate chip filling -- a variation of Abby Dodge's Emergency Blender Cupcakes recipe found in her book The Weekend Baker.  I was very pleased with this recipe because it was so easy to make yet had such a rich flavor that you wouldn't think that it only took a couple of minutes to whip up.  This month's first ever THB (The Home Bakers) recipe is for Cheese-Swirled Chocolate Bundt Cake from the book "Coffee Cakes" By Lou Seibert Pappas -- a cake very similar in concept to the black bottom cupcakes that I made wherein the same cream cheese and chocolate chip mixture is sandwiched between thick chocolate batter but this time, baked in a bundt pan instead of cupcake molds.  I changed things up a bit this time though by adding dulce de leche to the cream cheese filling and omitting the chocolate chips.

I must say though that I'm a bit disappointed with this cake as it was dry (despite under-baking it) and the chocolate flavor wasn't as intense as I expected.  In fact, I would call this a very bland cake.  Looking at the recipe again I think the proportions are all wrong as there's too much all-purpose flour for the amount of oil and cocoa powder listed.  I think if I lessened the AP flour by 1/2 - 1 cup and added 1/2 cup more oil, the cake would be a lot moister.  I know I omitted the chocolate chips but I still think that this recipe would've benefitted from more cocoa powder as well.  Again, given the amount of AP flour I think 1 1/2 cups of cocoa powder instead of 2/3 cup would've made such a difference.

I'm certainly hoping the other recipes from this book would turn out better than this one!