Chocolate Kugelhopf

This month, at The Cake Slice Bakers, the four recipes selected from the book World Class Cakes by Roger Pizey, which we are currently baking from are ;

Ginger Cake
Scandinavian Cardamom Coffee Cake
Chocolate Kugelhopf
Tarte aux Pommes

Members can choose any of these cakes to bake, and my choice is Chocolate Kugelhopf, since I am drawn to yeasty bakes!

This Chocolate Kugelhopf has a chocolate ganache swirls in it. It bakes into a soft and nice kugelhopf, but the process of making it is rather frustrating (to me!).

The recipe uses 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks, but the instructions says to mix in the egg yolks without any mention of the whole egg, and I was wondering whether should I use the whole egg as well or was it a typo error in the instructions. I went ahead and add the whole egg, assuming that it has been left out in the instructions.  The dough is like very thick batter, and I have to add almost half a cup of extra flour so that it is a little doughy, and even then, the "dough" is still very soft and so, so, sticky. I thought of adding more flour but am afraid that the bread will be dry, as I've added about 30% extra to the original amount. Honestly I almost gave up and thought of dumping the dough. But I went ahead anyway and hope for the best! I left the dough to proof for the first rising, punch it down, and it was supposed to be rolled on a floured counter. No way I could roll the very soft, very sticky dough without it sticking onto the counter, and it would definitely stick to the rolling pin from the looks of it, even if I flour the top, I would need quite an amount of flour, and I am not confident that I could transfer the very soft dough onto a baking sheet, which is to be refrigerated for 30 minutes. I placed the dough on a large sheet of plastic, which I placed on an upturned baking sheet, then place another large sheet of plastic over the dough, and use a rolling pin to roll it into a large rectangle. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, keeping fingers crossed that it will be easier to work with later on. 

Remove from the refrigerator and immediately spread the ganache all over. Roll the dough, swiss roll style. Still too soft to roll, and with the help of a wide pastry cutter, I tried rolling it but it was difficult to roll as the dough was sticky. In the end, it looks like a misshapen lump of log, rather than a nice rolled up smooth log of a dough. I know definitely that there will not be any pretty swirls in there! Bring the two ends together into a ring, adjust the dough, by shaping it gently, with floured hands, so that it is more or less the same thickness all around. Gather the dough and place in the greased bundt pan, with a whole almond placed in each ridge at the bottom of the bundt pan. Cover with greased cling wrap and left to rise until doubled in size. It certainly rises well! Bake in a preheated oven for 35 minutes, though I baked mine for an additional 5 minutes to get that really brown colour on the crust. It looks really huge after baking and I do hope that the kugelhopf will turn out good!

Let the kugelhopf rest for 10 minutes in the pan, then unmold onto a wire rack, glaze while still warm with some glaze, with a recipe provided for it. Since I have a container of apricot glaze, I used that instead. Allow the kugelhopf to cool. I could not wait to slice, to see the inside and taste it. But I was rather pleased with how it looks like from the outside!

Once it has cooled down, the glaze disappeared, no longer glossy! But I'm not concerned with that. I am eager to see the inside!

No pretty swirls! But the taste makes up for it! This Chocolate Kugelhopf is soft and fluffy. Tasted really good with the addition of chocolate ganache.  The kugelhopf was still soft the next day when we had it for breakfast, and we enjoyed slices of it with our morning coffee. That being said, I will not be making this again, but I was glad that I have given it a try.

Note : I've used 1 teaspoon instant yeast instead of the fresh yeast calls for in the recipe. For the ganache, I've used dark chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate. I baked in a 6-cup Nordic Ware bundt pan. 

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