• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a tube pan or bundt pan. (This recipe makes about 9.5 cups of batter.) See notes.
• Add dry ingredients to the bowl of your mixer and mix for one minute to blend (sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt)
• Add butter a few slices at a time and mix until it reaches a crumbly, sandy texture. Be careful not to over-mix beyond "sandy" consistency.
• In another bowl, combine sour cream, eggs, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Using a fork, mix together. This is all of your wet ingredients except for the coffee, it will be added to the batter later.
• Set a timer for 1 ½ minutes and SLOWLY add half of your egg mixture to your butter/flour mixture while mixing. Start mixer on low speed then increase to medium for the remainder of the 1 ½ minutes. Do Not Mix Above Medium Speed.
• Stop mixer, scrape the sides and bottom of bowl, and add half of the remaining egg mixture. Mix on medium speed for 20 seconds.
• Stop mixer, scrape down the sides if necessary, and add the last of the egg mixture. Mix for 20 more seconds on medium speed.
• Slowly add HOT coffee and mix on low speed for 20-30 seconds to blend. Batter will be runny but that is okay!
• This recipe makes about 9 ½ cups of batter. Pour into the prepared bundt pan or tube pan and bake. Ours was ready after 50 minutes. Baking times may vary. Check after 45 minutes to be on the safe side. Insert and remove a wooden skewer into the baked cake- if it comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs attached, it is ready.

For the Glaze

• Combine the 4 oz. semi-sweet or dark chocolate and 3 oz. heavy cream in a microwave safe bowl. Heat in the microwave in small increments (30 seconds or less), stirring occasionally in between, until the chocolate is almost completely melted.
• Then, allow to sit a minute or two and gently stir to melt any remaining pieces of chocolate. Cool the ganache to desired consistency for dripping. We like to apply the drip using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.

For the Buttercream

• Add butter and mix on low to medium speed until smooth. Add vanilla and blend into the butter. Add powdered sugar, salt, and cocoa powder.
• Add most of the milk. Begin mixing at low speed so you won't have a cloud of powdered sugar in your kitchen.
• Continue to mix adding remaining milk as needed. It may take 5 to 6 minutes to reach the smoothness and consistency you like. It will take longer if using a hand mixer. As you mix the frosting will become very smooth. You can add additional milk (1 Tablespoon at a time) if the frosting is too thick or additional powdered sugar if too soft.

Decorating the Cake

• After cooling the cake, we spooned our chocolate glaze over the cake and chilled to firm it up a bit (about 10 minutes in the freezer or longer in the refrigerator.)
• Then, I piped chocolate buttercream rosettes onto the chilled glaze using a 1M piping tip.l I added leaves with a leaf tip 52.
• This cake can sit at room temperature for 2-3 days under a cake dome or airtight container. If you prefer to refrigerate, you will want to remove from the refrigerator a couple of hours before serving so that the cake has a chnace to warm and soften.