Root beer cake will have you floating on cloud 9

It’s a good year for books on baking, and Baked: New Frontiers in Baking (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95) can hold its own with some of the weightier tomes we have seen.

In 2005, authors Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito left their day jobs in the ad biz to open a bakery in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They named it Baked. Three years later, Baked’s brownie has been named the country’s best by the not-easily swayed America’s Test Kitchen and chosen by Oprah Winfrey as one of her favorite things.

Their cookbook, out this month, is filled with treats both sweet and savory (but mostly sweet): sour lemon scones, chipotle Cheddar biscuits, milk chocolate malt-ball cake, the bakery’s signature sweet-and-salty cake (a classic chocolate cake topped with salted caramel and a caramel ganache frosting), coconut snowball cupcakes, butterscotch pudding tarts and those champion brownies. Lots of tips and tricks, too.

With their root beer bundt cake, the authors "wanted to create a cake that approximated the flavor and the lazy summer pleasure of a root beer float."

Root beer bundt cake

Serves 12

If you can find root beer schnapps, replace 1/2 cup of the root beer in the cake with root beer schnapps for a more pronounced flavor.

Cake:

2 cups root beer (do not use diet root beer)

1 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed dark-brown sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

Root beer fudge frosting:

2 ounces dark chocolate (60 percent cacao), melted and cooled slightly

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup root beer

2/3 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder

2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

To serve:

Vanilla ice cream

Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Generously spray the inside of a 10-inch bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray; or butter it, dust with flour and knock out excess flour.

2. In a small saucepan, heat the root beer, cocoa powder and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted. Add the granulated and brown sugar and whisk until dissolved. Remove from heat, pour into a large bowl and let cool.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together.

4. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beaten, then whisk them into cocoa mixture until combined. Gently fold flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. The batter will be slightly lumpy — do not overbeat, as it could toughen the cake.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, until a small sharp knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Loosen the sides of the cake from the pan and turn it out onto the rack.

Root beer fudge frosting:

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the frosting is shiny and smooth.

2. Use a spatula to spread the fudge frosting over the crown of the bundt in a thick layer. Let the frosting set before serving.

To serve:

1. Serve each piece with vanilla ice cream on the side.

Nutritional analysis per serving: 505 calories, 19 grams fat, 85 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams protein, 77 milligrams cholesterol, 514 milligrams sodium, 5 grams dietary fiber, 33 percent of calories from fat.

— "Baked: New Frontiers in Baking" by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito