Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake — The Torte I Made When We Rang in the New Year from Bed

New Year's Eve. The secular one, not the Jewish one — I've already had my new year, back in September with the round challah and the honey and the shofar. But the secular new year has its own gravity, its own pull toward reflection, and I am not immune. Fifty-nine years old as 2016 ends. In four months I will be sixty. The number doesn't frighten me. The number is a fact. What the number represents — the accumulation of years, the nearness of all the things nearness implies — that gives me pause. But only pause. Not fear. Fear is for people who haven't spent thirty-eight years standing in front of teenagers. After teenagers, nothing is scary.

Marvin and I do not go out on New Year's Eve. We have not gone out on New Year's Eve since 1994, when we attended a party at the Steinbergs' and Marvin fell asleep on their couch at eleven-fifteen and I had to wake him for the countdown, and he looked at me with the bewildered eyes of a man who has been roused from a dream about spreadsheets and said, "Is it over?" We decided, mutually and without recrimination, that we are not New Year's Eve people. We are New Year's morning people. We are the people who go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up in a new year feeling rested and superior.

I made a dinner for two: brisket (always brisket for occasions that matter), roasted root vegetables, and a chocolate torte that is dense and dark and European in the way that Viennese things are European — elegant, rich, slightly melancholy. The torte is not Sylvia's recipe. It is one I found in a cookbook by Claudia Roden, a food writer who understands that Jewish cooking extends beyond Ashkenazi borders, and whose recipes treat food as archaeology — each dish a dig into a buried culture. The torte is Sephardic-ish. Sylvia would have found it pretentious. I find it perfect.

At midnight — which we heard from bed, through the muffled sound of the Goldsteins' television — Marvin said, "Happy New Year, Ruthie." I said, "Happy New Year, Marv." He was asleep again in two minutes. I lay awake for a while, listening to the fireworks over the water, thinking about the year. My first year as a blogger. Six months of writing about Sylvia's recipes and my kitchen and the Grand Concourse and the way food carries memory the way rivers carry sediment — slowly, constantly, depositing it in unexpected places downstream.

2017 tomorrow. The kitchen will be the same. The stove will be warm. The challah will rise. The words will come. I am ready. I am always ready. Readiness is what I do.

That night, lying awake listening to the fireworks, I kept thinking about the torte—how something could be rich and celebratory and a little unfamiliar all at once, which is exactly how I felt about the year. I wanted to mark the turn into 2017 with something that felt like occasion without fuss, something that could hold its own against a midnight that was quiet and full at the same time. This Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake is what I made the next morning: deep and not too sweet, with a brightness running through it that reminds you, mid-bite, that there’s more to come.

Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 55 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pan
• 8 oz bittersweet chocolate (70% cacao or higher), roughly chopped
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream, room temperature
• 1/2 cup strong brewed coffee, cooled
• 3/4 cup seedless raspberry jam
• 1 cup fresh raspberries, for serving (optional)
• Powdered sugar or cocoa powder, for dusting

Instructions

1. Prepare the pan. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Generously butter a 10- to 12-cup bundt pan, making sure to coat every crevice. Dust lightly with cocoa powder and tap out the excess. Set aside.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and chopped chocolate together, stirring frequently until completely smooth. Remove from heat and let cool for 10 minutes.
3. Build the batter. Whisk the sugar into the cooled chocolate mixture until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract and the raspberry jam until the batter is uniform and glossy.
4. Add the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture in two additions, alternating with the sour cream and coffee. Stir gently until just combined—do not overmix.
5. Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out with only a few moist crumbs. The cake will be dense; do not overbake.
6. Cool completely. Let the cake rest in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, then carefully invert onto the rack. Allow to cool fully before dusting and slicing—this is a patient cake, and it rewards patience.
7. Finish and serve. Dust with powdered sugar or cocoa powder just before serving. Arrange fresh raspberries in the center well if desired. Serve in thin, deliberate slices—this cake is rich and serious and goes a long way.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 54g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 160mg