Rotweinkuchen or German Red Wine Chocolate Cake is a traditional German cake recipe that our family has loved over the years, and a perfect cake for an autumn or winter coffee and cake!  My wife uses a recipe she found online years ago and tweaked it to add special touches and variations based on the ingredients she has on hand. You can find any number of quality Rotweinkuchen recipes online by searching for Rotweinkuchen or German Red Wine Chocolate Cake online, and simply use a recipe that fits your fancy!

The traditional Rotweinkuchen is normally dusted with powdered sugar just before serving, but my wife likes to melt German Ritter-sport chocolate to make a glaze or icing to drip over the warm cake after it’s removed from the baking form.  Her preference is to combine squares of dark and milk chocolate pieces for a nice flavor, but any quality baking chocolate, chocolate chips or the chocolate of your choice would work as well.

For convenience, she blends chocolate chips into the cake batter as opposed to shaving pieces from a block of chocolate, however the larger chocolate chips tend to sink to the bottom of the cake form, so use mini-morsels as they stay in place within the batter while baking.

The photo below is an extremely decadent version with chocolate chips in the chocolate glaze – what’s not to like, chocolate lovers?! 🙂 A slice of Rotweinkuchen begs for a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a dollop of real whipped cream ~ enjoy! 🙂

Rotweinkuchen or German Red Wine Chocolate Cake