A Bundt Primer

How to get the best out of your bundt pan

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If you have followed me for any length of time you are bound to know that I am rather partial to a Bundt cake. There is something about their form that is just so appealing, they’re big and generous and the cakes baked in them have an inbuilt beauty. The style of cake typically baked in these pans also plays to my cravings and my preferences, bundt cakes are commonly on the more dense side of things, moist and velvety cakes that are everything I love.

On this week bonus newsletter, for paid subscribers, I have a fabulous new bundt cake recipe, inspired by the Bounty chocolate bar, a glorious combination of milk chocolate and coconut. Before you go and bake that cake, I thought it might be useful to give you a brief primer on Bundt cakes, a bit of history, a guide to baking the perfect bundt cakes and a roundup of some of my favourite bundt recipes from over the years.

A Brief History

Bundt cakes are a relatively modern invention but their origins can be traced to European Kugelhopf cakes (Kugelhupf, Guglhupf, Gugelhopf) which themselves are far from modern and can actually be traced back to the medieval period. These cakes are particularly associated with Germany, Austria and France, but can be found across most of Eastern Europe. The cake in question is actually a yeasted affair and is very similar in style to a French Brioche but baked in a classic kugelhopf pan, a round stoneware pan with a distinctive hole in the centre.

The move from Kugelhopf to Bundt isn’t obvious but it is interesting. Nordicware was, and still is, a family owned bakeware company based in Minneapolis. The company was founded by Dave and Dotty Dalquist back in 1946, and they originally specialised in Scandinavian inspired bakeware, inspired by Dotty’s Danish immigrant parents and the baking she grew up with. In 1950 the company was approached by a local Jewish woman’s group who wanted the company to make a modern version of the kugelhopf pans they had used back in Europe. Instead of heavy stoneware, David used aluminium for a significantly lighter version. You might imagine that is the end of the story, the pans became the instant success they are today, but no, it actually took another decade before these pans truly took off. When they were originally made they sold so poorly that the company actually considered discontinuing them, only in the 60’s did the popularity of the Bundt pan explode, when a Texan woman entered her ‘Tunnel of Fudge’ cake into the 1966 Pilsbury Bake Off, coming in second place. This led to thousands of orders and the true start of the love affair with bundt pans. Since then Nordicware have gone on to sell over 60 million Bundt pans.

How to Prepare a Bundt Pan

Because of the shape of Bundt pans you cannot simply line them with parchment paper, so how do you prepare one of these pans to ensure the cake doesn’t stick? This simple stage of preparation is especially important because some of these pans have very detailed designs and proper preparation is they key to ensuring a cake that easily releases from the pan.

Butter and Flour

Greasing the pan with softened butter and dusting with flour is the most traditional way of preparing this sort of pan. The butter should not be melted as the pans already have a coating to help the cake release and if a liquid fat like melted butter or oil is used it will bead and not actually coat the pan evenly, so use soft butter. Brush the tin with a thin layer of butter, making sure every nook and cranny is coated, especially the central core as this seems to be the most overlooked part of the pan. Once coated, dust the entire tin with a thin layer of flour (or cocoa powder for chocolate cakes). Turn the pan over and tap on the work surface allowing any excess flour to fall out, you want this layer to be as thin as possible. 

Pro: ingredients always on hand and cheap, no special ingredients or equipment needed

Cons: Can leave a floury coating on your cakes and isn’t always a fail safe method of preventing sticking

Note: You can also butter and sugar your bundt pan, adding a thin layer of white sugar instead of flour. I have actually never tried this method so cant talk to its success.

Spray Oils

For many years using a cake release spray was my go to way of preparing my Bundt pans, an aerosol which coats the pan evenly in fat and the cakes always released very easily. Nordicware’s own advice is to be careful about the choice of spray oil as some are not designed for cakes and can actually damage the lining of the pans over time. Look for oils that are designed for cakes and not for cooking. General advice with a spray is to hold the pan over the sink, the oils can be hard to direct and can leave a layer of oil on your countertops or floor, and hold the can about 15-20cm away from the tin to ensure an even coating. With these sprays you don’t generally need to add flour as they formulated to work without it, although some brands actually include flour in their formula. 

Pros: quick, easy and reliable

Cons: comparatively expensive and you have to buy an additional product, can also be messy

Cake Goop

This is by far my favourite method, since switching a few years ago I have never had a cake stick, and in fact I now use this for almost all of my baking, not just bundt cakes. It is basically a homemade version of cake release spray that is much cheaper to make than to buy and it is less fussy to use and wont coat everything in a thin layer of oil. To make you simply beat together an equal amount, by volume, of vegetable oil, shortening (this is Trex in the UK) and plain flour. To do this I use an American cup measure but you can use any container you want to measure out the ingredients, you simply want an equal volume of each. Scrape your cake goop into a sealable container and store in the fridge, it will keep for months and months. To use you simply brush the pan you are using with an even coating of the cake goop.

Pro: easy and cheap to make, plus it is the most failsafe method I have used to date

Con: you have to make it yourself and you may need to buy shortening if you don’t use regularly use it

Turning Out The Bundt

You’ve properly prepared your pan and you’ve baked a beautiful bundt cake, you’ve done everything you need to, right? Not quite. Bundt cakes are big and you need to take one little bit of precaution before you turn out the cake. Wait 10 minutes. It is as simple as that. If you attempt to turn out the cake immediately you may find that half of the cake comes out and half sticks to the pan. Why? Because the structure of the cake hasn't fully set, turning it out too early when the cake is still very delicate can lead to this issue of a cake falling apart. If you leave the cake to cool down for too long it can also stick. Why? Because as the cake cools the sugars in the cake can stick themselves to the pan and keep the cake firmly lodged inside the pan. From years and years of making bundt cakes I have found 10-15 minutes to be the magic number, enough time for the cakes structure to set but not long enough that the cake has a change to glue itself to the pan.

Questions

Got any bundt queries? Leave a comment down below and I will endeavour to answer them to the best of my ability

Favourite Bundt Recipes

Over the years I have written many recipes for these fabulous pans so here is a little round up of some of my favourites.

After Eight Bundt

This recipe was a cover star for Olive magazine back in Christmas of 2020 and it is without the doubt the most made bundt cake I have ever created. A simple chocolate cake batter with a hidden peppermint cheesecake filling it is glazed with a peppermint ganache and decorated with after eight mints for a very festive treat.

Tahini Chocolate Bundt

Also for Olive magazine this cake blends tahini and chocolate and is decorated with a simple sesame brittle. A personal fav.

Neapolitan Bundt Cake

Originally developed for Nordicware to celebrate their 75th anniversary this is such a fun recipe to make. A cake batter is split and flavoured with chocolate, raspberry and vanilla and baked so that each section of the bundt pan contains a different flavour. This is one of my favourite looking bundt recipes and it tastes as good as it looks.

Boston Creme Bundt

This is a rare light bundt cake, going against the grain of the more popular dense style cakes most often associated with the bundt pan. Inspired by the Boston creme cake it is light layers of sponge filled with vanilla pastry cream and glazed with chocolate

Bountyful Bundt

And of course this weeks bonus newsletter recipe needs a mention. This cake, inspired by the Bounty chocolate bar is a coconut lovers dream, a moist and dense coconut cake is glazed completely with milk chocolate and then generous coated in a layer of desiccated coconut.