Chocolate Bundt Cake with Nutella Glaze

A colleague from work is leaving because she just got a super-cool new professional gig at another institution  in the city.  She'll do really great there, but she will certainly be missed at out work.  And what better way to say "Congrats and Good Luck!" than sharing baked goods, right? :)

I did a little multiple-choice form-and-flavor questioning to find the best thing for the last day celebration.  She picked cake and chocolate and mentioned that Nutella was a good thing in her book. 
 

Then I did some online recipe searches and found the following on OneDollarCottage.com.  Well, a version of it, anyway...this has my edits and changes.  

It turned out really good!  Lots of compliments and positive reviews from everyone.  The cake was moist and dense, and the glaze was really chocolate-y.  (Actually, the glaze was really thick, so it didn't turn out quite as delicately decorative as I initially wanted.  But it ended up looking pretty nice and tasting so good, that I forgive it for being a bit hard to work with.)

Plus, bundt cakes always look really special and fancier than sheet cakes.  And people can cut small slivers or big chunks, depending on how people feel  

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 box of Devil’s Food Cake Mix
• 1 box of instant chocolate pudding
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 cup sour cream (I actually used light sour cream, because then I will use the left overs in my cooking in the next day or so.  It worked perfectly.)
• Mini chocolate chips, about 1 1/2 cups or so

Cake Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Grease bundt cake pan. 
3. Combine ingredients in a bowl
4. Mix with a mixer (or a spoon and then a whisk, like I did) for about 2 minutes; batter will be really, really thick.  
5. Add chocolate chips, and fold in by hand. 
6. Put batter into pan and spread/shake to even it out a bit. 
7. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a cake tester stuck in the center comes out clean. 
8. Turn out onto a plate.  
9. Add glaze while warm.  

Glaze Ingredients:

• 1/2 of a 12 oz. jar hazelnut-chocolate spread (usually this means Nutella, but I had a 20% off coupon for the Hershey's version.  Since this is for the glaze, the difference in texture between the types of spreads shouldn't matter)
• 1/3 of a stick of butter/margarine (I used the second, 'cause that's what I had in my fridge)
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla, or so

The original recipe called for a full jar of Nutella and a full stick of butter.  I just wanted to have a drizzle-glaze, rather than a full-cake-glaze, so less seemed like a good idea.  And a lower ratio of butter--while making it thicker--also made it more Nutella-like.  I definitely recommend less-is-more (butter) in this circumstance!  

Glaze Directions:

1. Put spread and margarine in a microwave-safe bowl.  Heat slowly on a medium to medium-high setting until melted.  (You could also do this on the stove in a medium or small saucepan.)
2. Stir together
3. Add vanilla
4. Whisk together
5. Drizzle over warm cake