Last weekend I met up with an old school friend from Germany who was visiting London for a few days. It was great to see her again and delve into some school time memories …

Talking about our old high school reminded me of all sorts of things, one of them being the cakes people used to bake each other for birthdays. “Rotwein Kuchen”, red wine cake, was always one of the most popular ones! We probably thought it was cool to have red wine cake at school although the alcohol content would probably be pretty much zero after the baking. The cake really tastes like a light, moist and slightly chocolaty loaf cake and as most German cakes, is not too sweet.

With it being Christmas time right now, I thought, why not give the cake a little make over by using mulled wine instead and it worked!

You may find yourself with a little left over mulled wine the day after your Christmas drinks. Though as mulled wine gets drunk up rather easily, it might be a better idea to set a glass aside for some baking the day after. 

For the cake you’ll need:

• 250g butter or margerine
• 250g caster sugar
• 8g vanilla infused sugar (for Germans, this is 1Pk Vanille Zucker)
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cocoa
• 125ml cold mulled wine (or plain red wine)
• 250g flour
• 15g baking powder (again, for Germans, this is 1Pk)
• 100g chocolate sprinkles or small (!) chocolate shavings
• a little icing sugar to decorate

For the bundt cake tin:

• butter for the cake tin
• 2 Tbsp breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees.

Butter the cake tin generously and then sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly in the tin.

Whisk the butter with the sugars until creamy and fluffy. Now add the eggs, one at a time, whisking them in.
Add the cinnamon, cocoa and wine and mix again.

Combine the flour and baking powder and mix them in as well.
The last ingredient to go in the batter is the chocolate sprinkles/shavings, which should be folded in.

Pour the mix in the bundt tin and bake the cake in the oven for 50 minutes.

To get the cake out of the form in one piece, a generous buttering and bread crumbs are only the start, as my grandma taught me. Now that the cake is baked you need to let it cool down a little while, say 10 -15 minutes. Then I cut around the ring in the middle of the tin and also make sure that the very top of the cake is loosened a little with the knife, before I turn the tin over on a plate and cover it with a cold wet towel. I let this sit for about 10 minutes and only then lift the tin off the cake. Should it still be sticky you can leave it under the towel a bit longer (you might have to re-wet it). Hopefully you’re cake will come out in one piece and can then be dusted with some icing sugar.