chocolate

dark chocolate chunk cookies with dried cherries and walnuts

I’m not sure if this is true where you live, but here in Brooklyn this has been the weirdest, craziest winter I’ve ever seen.

To start with, up until very recently we’ve barely had anything even remotely close to an actual “winter”. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but on Christmas eve it was almost 70 degrees outside. On Christmas day we had to open all the windows in the house while I made dinner, but with the oven on all day we were still all overheated and sweaty by dinner time, even with the open windows.

After Christmas it was more of the same. Temperatures didn’t dip below freezing until well after the new year, but even then snow flakes were nowhere in sight. Having grown up and lived in New York State for my entire life, this is the latest and longest I’ve ever waited to see flakes of frozen water fall from the sky.

Then, practically out of nowhere, we got dumped on.

A few days before it happened they mentioned the possibility of a blizzard on the news. As the day of the blizzard grew nearer, the predictions grew bleaker and more serious. They even named the storm the same way they name hurricanes. Winter storm Jonas. Since when do we name winter storms?
By the morning before Jonas came to town, they were practically predicting the end of the world, by snow and freezing and ice.

I’ve been around this block before though, this unpredictable New York State weather block, so I took the impending “snowpocalypse” with a grain of salt.

Then it hit us. I checked the window just before bed last Friday night, and saw that a few flakes were just beginning to stick. I honestly expected that I’d wake the next morning to find an inch or so of accumulation, and turn on the news to hear apologies and oopsies from our local meteorologists. It’s happened before.

My alarm woke me early Saturday morning, and before I started to get ready for work I checked the window. I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I was shocked to see that we already had about six inches on the ground, with plenty more on the way. Part of me thought it wouldn’t keep up though, and I had to go in to work anyway, so I went about my day. It wasn’t until I got to work, my beard covered in snow, that I started to realize it wasn’t letting up. It was getting worse. Some of my coworkers couldn’t even get in for the day because the trains couldn’t get through.

By noon the governor had issued a state of emergency and they were announcing bus closures and travel bans. Not long after that the police commissioner sent out a tweet saying that anyone found driving on the roads in NYC would be arrested. Staff at work, myself included, started to panic and since there weren’t many customers to speak of, we closed early and trudged our way home while we still could. Luckily the train line I live off of runs underground. There were delays, but it was still running. I walked home from the train down the middle of the street, since most sidewalks in my neighborhood hadn’t yet been shoveled.

The next morning the clouds parted and the sun came out, but the sidewalks still weren’t shoveled, the intersections not clear to pedestrians, and the streets were barely plowed. I was practically snowed in, and with nothing to do and nowhere to go, I figured I may as well bake some cookies.

I didn’t want to brave the streets so I dug through the cupboards and took inventory of what we had in the house. My mom gave me a big bag of shelled walnuts the last time I went to visit, and I had an extra bag of dried cherries leftover from my Christmas pork roast. I didn’t have any chocolate chips in the house, but I did have a big ass bar of 72% dark chocolate from Trader Joe’s. (incidentally, I’m not sure if you have a TJ’s near you, but I seriously can’t sing enough praises for the price and quality of their chocolate. I generally try to avoid specific product endorsements, but their “Pound Plus” bars are a dream come true to someone who loves chocolate almost as much as he loves to bake.)

In keeping with the extremely unusual and unpredictable nature of this winter, it’s less than a week since our “snowmageddon” and it’s melting away as quickly as it came. There will be nothing left but memories and instagram photos in a few days more.

Whether you’re snowed in or just want a sweet treat, these cookies are THE BOMB!

The cookie itself is buttery, soft, chewy, delicately salty, and perfect in every way (Thanks Martha). Twice as much brown sugar as white ensures a tender chewy cookie that stays soft for days. Rather than the traditional chocolate chips though, this cookie is loaded with pockets of rich and melty bittersweet dark chocolate; studded with bits of chewy, sweet, tart, and jammy dried cherries; and peppered with just enough crunchy, toasty, nutty, earthy, ever-so-slightly-bitter walnuts to tie it all together. These three ingredients were seriously made for each other.

What are you still doing here? Go preheat that oven and take that butter out to soften!

Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Dried Cherries and Walnuts

Servings: makes approximately 32 cookies, depending on scoop size
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Adapted from Martha Stewart

1 cup chopped walnuts
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed dark-brown sugar (light would work fine too)
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups dark chocolate chunks or chips
1 cup chopped dried cherries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Arrange walnuts on a baking sheet in a single layer, and toast for about 6 to 8 minutes, or until they smell toasty and nutty. Cool and roughly chop.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter with both sugars and beat on medium-high speed until very light and fluffy, for about 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add the salt, vanilla, and eggs. Beat until well combined, for about 1 minute. Add flour, mix until just combined, then stir in the chocolate, cherries, and walnuts just until evenly distributed.

Scoop dough out using a portion scoop and place cookies about 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. I like big cookies so I used a #24 scoop, which works out to about 3 tablespoons of dough per cookie. You can make smaller cookies, and you’ll end up with more individual cookies, but you’ll need to reduce the baking time by a few minutes. Alternatively you can make larger cookies with a smaller yield, but you may need to extend the baking time by 2 or 3 minutes.

Bake until cookies are golden around the edges, but still soft in the center, around 11 to 13 minutes for 3 tablespoon sized scoops. Remove from oven, and let cool on baking sheet 1 to 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

nusstaler

What is it about cookies that makes them the (un)official dessert of the holiday season?

With all the baking people are doing this time of year, and with all the desserts that fit the bill for the holidays, why the humble cookie? You got your cakes, your tarts, your pies, your puddings and custards, your candies, and all manner of other sweet treats that feel just as festive and celebratory.

Perhaps cookies take the cake because they’re so sharable. Because they’re such a social dessert. Even though they’re essentially single serving, homemade cookies are always best eaten with friends and family.

Maybe it’s because they make such excellent gifts. Unlike cakes and pies, cookies keep well at room temperature for a long while, so they store, pack, and ship well. A batch of cookies that comes out of an oven in New York City can be enjoyed by a California grandmother just a few days later.

Maybe it’s because they’re so customizable and widely varied. Spiced cookies, iced cookies, soft cookies, crunchy cookies, chewy cookies, thin cookies, thick cookies, sandwich cookies, stuffed cookies, cutout cookies, chocolate cookies, nutty cookies, fruity cookies, oaty cookies, buttery cookies, olive oil cookies, endless kinds of cookies!

Fill a tray to overflowing will all of your favorites, and it’s an instant party!

A cookie swap is a great way to make sure your holiday party has that obligatory cookie platter, without being stuck in the kitchen for days to roll and cut and decorate fifteen different recipes.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of a cookie swap, each person bakes up a huge batch of one recipe, and then everyone gets together and swaps everything. You show up with a boatload of own your recipe, but leave with half a dozen of several different cookies to share with your family. It’s like a baker’s dream party. A pre-holiday-party holiday party!

While I absolutely love the idea of a cookie swap, I’ve never actually been to one! Thankfully, most food bloggers love to bake (and eat) cookies just as much as I do, and a few years ago two of my favorite bloggers decided to get creative with the cookie swap concept.

Thanks to Love & Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen, we now have the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap! Food bloggers from across the nation and across the globe get to interact and share cookies with each other from the comforts of home. We’re assigned three blogs to send our cookies to, and three blogs send cookies our way. It’s like secret santa by mail, but with homemade cookies!

It’s a great way to meet new bloggers and taste some seriously delicious cookies. It’s also a great cause, as donations are collected for participating, and all proceeds benefit Cookies for Kid’s Cander, a national non-profit organization committed to funding new therapies used in the fight against pediatric cancer.

Coming up with a cookie recipe worthy of sharing with other food bloggers was a job I took extremely seriously. We’ve already established that I’m a bit of an over achiever, so I found the infinite number of cookie recipes out there pretty daunting.

When it comes to the holidays, I usually like to stick to my German heritage, but I was running out of ideas. A few years back I made some traditional pfeffernusse, and last year I made a gingerbread linzer cookie for my first time participating in the cookie swap.

Whenever I get kind of stumped I like to pour over Pinterest for inspiration. That’s where I found a recipe from Saveur for a traditional Bavarian Christmas cookie called nusstaler that caught my eye. I was intrigued. They looked beautiful and sounded delicious. Absolutely. You betcha. I couldn’t wait.

Then I read the reviews.

Almost everyone who attempted to make their recipe said there were problems with it. I won’t get into all the details but from what I was reading this recipe had obviously not been thoroughly tested before publishing and had some serious technical flaws. I liked the idea of this cookie so much though, that I took to google looking for other recipes with better reviews. The problem is that Nusstaler are largely unknown in the US and the only recipes I could find were in German. The real barrier wasn’t the language though, it was the measurements. Google translates websites for you at the click of a button, but converting metric recipes isn’t quite so easy. You can easily find out the equivalents in cups and teaspoons, but they don’t always work out the way you’d want. I realized that a direct translation and conversion would mean my recipe would included measurements like 1.865 cups of flour, and I was almost ready to give up and ditch the whole thing.

But it was too late. I was bewitched by the very idea of these nutty chocolatey little cookies. I’d spent so much time digging for recipes that I was determined to stick with it. So, I decided to just try to figure it out on my own. Mind you, this is a cookie I’ve never tasted, never even heard of before seeing them on pinterest, but I was just going to wing it.

The basic idea was simple enough. Nusstaler are hazelnut shortbread dipped or coated in chocolate. After a little research I learned that they’re supposed to be sort of coin shaped. Nuss means nut, and Taler is a German spelling of Thaler, an ancient silver coin that was used in Europe for centuries. Thaler is actually the root of the word Dollar! So, essentially, nusstaler translates to nut coins. Yum!

While I can’t promise that my version of the nusstaler is completely authentic or traditional, I can promise that they’re absolutely delicous.

I was expecting them to be crumbly and crunchy like other shortbreads I’ve had, but these were actually pretty tender and delicate. I think this comes from the high nut to flour ratio in the shortbread base. Much of what I read online said nusstaler is usually made with equal parts white flour and finely ground hazelnut flour, so that’s what I went with.

The flavor is buttery, earthy, nutty, delicate, and perfect; with a touch of crunch from the whole toasted hazelnut topping each cookie. They’re just barely sweet in such a way that the coating of rich bittersweet dark chocolate on the bottoms really adds something. I thought that they might end up tasting a bit like nutella, but the flavors of the chocolate and the hazelnuts acutally reach your tongue separately so you’re able to enjoy each flavor individually.

I hope you’ll give these Bavarian Christmas cookies a try. If you do, I’m sure that these funny little nut coins are sure to become a new holiday favorite!

Nusstaler

Servings: makes about 2 dozen cookies
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1 cup whole hazelnuts, plus more for garnish
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 to 8 ounces good quality dark or semi-sweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350F.
Arrange hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake until fragrant, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and rub hazelnuts, a small handful at a time, in a kitchen towel to remove the husk. It won’t all come off, and that’s okay.

Transfer 1 cup of hazelnuts to a blender or food processor and grind very finely into a coarse flour. Pulse in flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa, just to combine. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and beat just until combined. Gradually mix in flour mixture until well combined. Refrigerate until firm, about an hour.

Portion dough into 1 inch scoops, about 1 1/2 tablespoons each, and arrange on parchment lined baking sheets, spaced about 2″ apart. Press a hazelnut into the top of each. Bake at 350F until just beginning to brown around the bottom edge, about 10 to 13 minutes.

While cookies cool, roughly chop chocolate and melt over low heat in a double boiler.
Dip bottoms of cooled cookies into melted chocolate, carefully lifting out with a fork. Return to parchment lined baking sheets until chocolate is completely cooled and set.

Cookies should keep for about a week in an airtight container

rocky road bundt cake #bundtbakers

Guess what time it is…
It’s bundt time y’all. That’s right.

This is actually my #bundtbakers anniversary. My bundtiversary? No, I won’t do that to you.

Anyway, this time exactly one year ago I had just joined the #bundtbakers and published my very first post as part of the group. The theme that month was “breakfast” and I whipped up a crazy amazing maple bacon bundt cake with an even crazier amazinger bacon pecan streusel swirl.

Finding the bundt bakers was the beginning of something truly magical, and I like to think I’ve come up with some really special, really creative bundt cakes along the way. I’ve also watched the group grow and change over the months and I couldn’t be happier to have found such a special bunch of bundt lovers.

This month our host, Laura of Baking in Pyjamas, chose Rocky Road as our theme. Can it get any better than that? I mean, chocolate, nuts, marshmallows… What more could you want?

But then I noticed something in the theme’s description that seemed, to me at least, to be out of place. The list of ingredients for traditional Rocky Road contained, “marshmallows, chocolate, biscuits (cookies in US English), & dried fruits.”

Wait.
What?
I’ve never had anything called Rocky Road that contained either cookies or dried fruit. And what happened to the nuts?

As it turns out, Rocky Road means different things in different countries. In Laura’s home country of England, Rocky Road traditionally includes the ingredients listed above.

As you may or may not already know, American Rocky Road is usually an ice cream flavor containing chocolate, marshmallows, & nuts. In England, it’s a dessert usually eaten in small individual cupcake or brownie sized portions. After a little research I found out that Australia also has their own version that also contains coconut, glacé cherries, and turkish delight.

Who knew?
(certainly not me.)

After learning about all the different variations on Rocky Road, I asked Laura if it’d be okay if we expanded the theme to also include the American and Australian versions.

After some significant consideration and much hemming and hawing over which variation to go with, I decided that the American version was the most familiar and sounded the most appealing to me. I came really close to trying to marry the English and American versions by adding cookies but skipping the dried fruit, but then I couldn’t decide what kind of cookie to use so I just scrapped the idea and decided to keep it simple and traditional.

I find the creativity of the group and the wide range of flavors and variations on this theme incredibly inspiring, not to mention mouth watering. You really need to scroll down past the recipe and see what everyone came up with this month. Before you do though, you’ll probably want to grab a towel to wipe up all the drool.

My original idea for this cake was to add miniature marshmallows to the batter and bake them right into the cake, but they didn’t cooperate. The marshmallows floated to the top of the batter and melted into a sticky mess when baked so I had to rework my recipe. I decided to put the marshmallows on top of the cake in the form of a glaze instead.

In the end, this cake was a real winner. I brought it in to work and my coworkers haven’t stopped talking about it yet.

As if the super moist, super flavorful chocolate cake base for this bundt weren’t perfect enough, it gets a melty chocolate boost in the form of mini chocolate chips mixed into the batter. Thinly sliced toasted almonds and a touch of almond extract go in too, and take things to an even more amazing level of deliciousness. Just when you though it couldn’t get any better, a sweet gooey marshmallow glaze gets poured over the top and even more chocolate chips and almonds get sprinkled over that.

Insanity.

Rocky Road Bundt Cake with Marshmallow Glaze

Servings: 12
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adapted from Joy the Baker

For the Cake:
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder (plus more for pan)
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup peanut oil or any neutral vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup mini chocolate chips

For the Marshmallow Glaze:
1 1⁄2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 cups mini marshmallows

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

Liberally butter a 10 to 12 cup Bundt pan and dust with a few tablespoons of cocoa powder to evenly coat the inside. Tap out excess cocoa and refrigerate pan until ready to use.

Whisk water and cocoa powder in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking frequently. Remove from heat and let come to room temperature.

Spread sliced almonds in an even layer on a small cookie sheet and toast at 350 for about 8 minutes or until they smell like nutty heaven on earth. Be careful that they don’t burn or they’ll become bitter.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, mix together sugar, salt, baking soda, eggs and egg yolk on low for just one minute. Add the buttermilk, oil, vanilla extract, and almond extract and mix on low again for another minute.
Add the flour and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes more. Add the cooled cocoa mixture and mix on medium speed for 3 minutes. The batter will seem quite loose and liquid. Reserve 2 tablespoons each of the sliced almonds and mini chocolate chips and set aside for the topping. Stir the rest into the cake batter until well distributed. Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for 55-65, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Let the cake cool completely in the pan and then invert onto a cooling rack.

To make the marshmallow glaze, mix sugar, vanilla, and salt in a bowl. Melt the butter along with 2 tablespoons of water in a nonstick sauce pan over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and immediately add in marshmallows and stir until completely melted, about 1–2 minutes. Whisk into sugar mixture until free of lumps.
Pour glaze evenly over the top of the cooled bundt and sprinkle with your reserved toasted sliced almonds and mini chocolate chips.

Cake should keep, well wrapped in an air tight container, for about 3 days. If refrigerating, let come to room temperature before serving.

The bundt bakers really knocked it out of the park this month. Get ready to drool and check out all of these amazing bundts!

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. You can see all our of lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the BundtBaker home page here.

brown sugar coconut bundt cake with dark chocolate ganache #bundtbakers

Have you had your Girl Scout Cookies yet this year?

We got ours, shipped in from Texas a few weeks ago, fresh from one of Russell’s girlfriend’s daughters. He ordered a few different flavors, but of course our favorites are the coconutty caramelly shortbread Samoas. In my experience, these are most people’s favorite choice, unless they don’t like coconut (in which case they’re probably crazy and may need to be committed).

This month Kelly from Passion Kneaded is our Bundt Bakers host and, in the spirit of the season, she chose Girl Scout Cookies as our theme. It didn’t take me more than half a millisecond to decide my cake would be inspired by the incomparable Samoa.
Thank you Kelly!

If you love Girl Scout Cookies (and Bundt cakes) as much as I do, be sure you scroll down past the recipe to see all the other mouthwatering recipes the Bundt Bakers came up with this month!

Rather than recreating the Samoa in Bundt cake form, I decided to just let the flavors and ingredients of the cookie inspire, rather than dictate, the direction I would take my cake.

I just bought a classic 12 cup Nordic Ware Bundt, and wanted to show it off in all it’s beautiful glory so I decided not to cover up the outside of the cake with a thick layer of coconut and caramel.
Instead, I thought I’d try to mix some brown sugar and butter with sweetened coconut flakes and make a sort of “shell” to line the interior of the pan before pouring in the batter. This way the coconut and “caramel” would appear to be on the outside just like the cookie, but it would really be baked as part of the cake. For the body of the cake, I used brown sugar and coconut milk to help emphasize the flavors of the coconut shell.

Mere words cannot describe the otherworldly sublime aroma that filled my house while this cake baked.

When it came time to glaze the cake I went with a thick, rich, bittersweet dark chocolate ganache. I decided on dark chocolate over milk because, A) I personally prefer dark chocolate, and B) real Samoas have dark chocolate drizzled over them too.

Have you ever heard anyone refer to Samoas as Caramel Delites? I always assumed the two names were just regional variations on the same cookie, but it turns out that these are two different types of girl scout cookies and the difference depends on the bakery they come from. Samoas have a richer, darker caramel color and a higher caramel to cookie ratio with a dark chocolate drizzle. Caramel DeLites have a caramel that’s lighter in color and not as thick, so more of the cookie comes through in the flavor. They’re also, oddly enough, actually octagonal rather than round, and are drizzled with milk chocolate instead of dark.

I usually bring at least half of my bundt cakes to work with me every month to share with my coworkers, because a bundt cake is too big for me and Russell to eat on our own (as much as we’d like to). Unless I have a special occasion or celebration that calls for a homemade cake, I’m baking these cakes each month just for the fun of it and because I like the challenge of working within the group’s theme each month.

This time around, everyone LOVED the cake other than one coworker who doesn’t like coconut (lunacy). The one thing that seemed to be a point of contention though was the dark chocolate ganache. Some people, myself included, were crazy for the contrast of light sweet delicate cake and assertive rich dark chocolate, while others thought the dark chocolate was too strongly flavored and overpowered the cake. If you’re not a fan of dark or bittersweet chocolate you can definitely go with milk instead for a Caramel Delite affect, or you could even substitute a powdered sugar and cocoa glaze if you think ganache might be too rich for you.

However you want to glaze this cake is just fine. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or a thin cocoa glaze, it’s all going to be delicious. In the end it doesn’t matter anyway, because the real star of the show here isn’t the glaze, it’s the CAKE!!!

The outside of this cake has a sweet buttery chewy crunchy coconut caramel shell that really drives that Samoa flavor home. The interior of the cake is buttery, tender and impossibly moist with a perfect subtle hint of caramel thanks to brown sugar and a delicate touch of coconut. Oh man.

So good.

Brown Sugar Coconut Bundt Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Servings: 12-16
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Adapted from Food Network

Coconut brown sugar mixture:
butter and flour for pan
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted unsalted butter

Cake:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
6 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon coconut extract, optional
1 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk

Ganache:
4 oz good quality dark chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Generously butter and flour a 10 to 12 cup non-stick bundt pan. I recommend one of Nordic Ware’s cast aluminum pans because of their superior non-stick coating. The coconut brown sugar mixture may stick to less non-stick pans or pans that are very intricately designed. Simpler is better in this case. Tap out excess flour and refrigerate.

Mix brown sugar and coconut together until well distributed. Pour melted butter over the mixture and toss to combine. Press into prepared bundt pan and refrigerate while you prepare the rest of the cake.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Cream the butter and sugars together using a stand mixer or hand mixer until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping the bowl after each addition. Once incorporated, stir in the extracts and the coconut milk and beat until combined. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients in three additions just until the mixture is smooth. Do not over mix.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan up to about 3/4 of the way full. If your pan is smaller than 12 cups, you may have batter leftover. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, about 70 minutes. Cool cake 20 minutes before turning it out onto a wire cooling rack. Cool completely on the rack.

Once cake is completely cool, make the ganache.
Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in a small heat proof bowl. Heat heavy cream in a small saucepan just until it begins to simmer. Pour cream over the chocolate, add a pinch of salt, and let sit for 2 minutes so the heat from the cream can melt the chocolate. Add the vanilla and stir or whisk until smooth and free of lumps. Before the ganache cools, pour it over the cake in a thick even stream.

Cake will keep, well covered and air tight, for 2 to 3 days at room temperature.

Check out all these drool worthy Girl Scout Cookie inspired cakes! I can’t handle this much delicious in one place!!!

- - Brown Sugar Coconut Bundt Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache from Tux at Brooklyn Homemaker
  - Chocolate Dipped Vanilla Mini Bundt Cakes from Renee at Magnolia Days
  - Chocolate Mint Bundt Cake from Teri at The Freshman Cook
  - Coconut Caramel Samoas Bundt Cake from Anshie at Spice Roots
  - Cranberry Lemon Bundt Cake from Jelena at A Kingdom for a Cake
  - Do Si Do Mini Bundts from Anne at From My Sweet Heart
  - Double Glazed Peanut Butter & Chocolate Fudge Bundt from Laura at Baking in Pyjamas
  - Golden Nut Bundt (Juliettes Bundt) from Tammy at Living the Gourmet
  - Lemon Bundt Cake with Lemonade Frosting from Anna at Media Racion Doble, Por Favor
  - Lemon Yogurt Bundt Cake with Limoncello Glaze from Pam at Sidewalk Shoes
  - Lemonade Bundt from Jane at Jane’s Adventures in Dinner
  - Lemonade Bundt Cake from Esti at Mummy & Cute
  - Marbled Samoa Bundt Cake from Patricia at Patty’s Cake
  - Mini Samoa Bundt Cakes from Andrea at Adventures in All Things Food
  - Mini Vanilla Bundt Cakes with Lemon Drizzle from Kathya at Basic N Delicious
  - Mint Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake from Sarah at The Chef Next Door
  - Mint Filled Coconut Vanilla Bundt from Shilpi at Simply Veggies
  - Peanut Butter Tagalong Bundt Cake from Mary at That’s My Home
  - Peppermint & Chocolate Marble Bundt Cake from Lara at Tartacadabra
  - Samoa Bundt Cake from Beatriz and Mara at I Love Bundt Cakes
  - Samoa Bundt Cake from Jana at Jenny and Sweets
  - Samoas Bundt Cake from Aisha at La Cocina de Aisha
  - “Savannah Smiles” Lemony Bundt Cake from Samantha at Un Mordisco Un Pecado
  - Spiked Lemonade Bundt from Kelly at Passion Kneaded
  - Tagalong Cookie Core Bundt from Julie at Eat, Drink, Be Mighty
  - Thin Mint Chocolate Bundt Cake from Rebekah at Making Miracles
  - Toffee-tastic Bundt Cake from Linda at Brunch with Joy
  - Trios (Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip-Oat) Bundt from Stacy at Food Lust People Love
  - What’s your favorite Girl Scout Cookie? (Tagalong Bundt Cake) from Wendy at A Day in the Life on the Farm
  - Whole Grain Oats Bundt {Rah-Rah Raisins} from Rocio at KidsandChic

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Interested in learning more about us? #BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. You can see all our of lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the BundtBaker home page here.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com. If you are just a lover of Bundt baking, you can find all of our recipe links by clicking our badge above or on our group Pinterest board.