Contents
The bundt pan is a 1950s American object — Nordic Ware made it at the request of a Minneapolis Jewish women's group who wanted something like the cast-iron Gugelhupf pans of Central Europe — and it became ubiquitous after a bundt cake took second place at the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off.
The shape is not decoration. A tube through the centre conducts heat inward, so a large, dense, high-fat cake bakes evenly where a solid round would not.
What makes it work
- Grease every crevice, then flour it — or use cocoa instead of flour on a chocolate cake, so there is no white residue. A baking spray with flour in it is the reliable option. This is the whole risk of a bundt: it sticks in one flute and tears.
- Turn out at exactly ten minutes. Sooner and it collapses; later and the sugars set the cake to the pan.
- Sour cream or buttermilk for a crumb tight enough to hold the pattern. A loose crumb blurs the flutes.
- Bloom the cocoa in hot coffee, as on devils food cake.
- Fill no more than two-thirds. A 10-cup pan takes about 1.6 kg of batter.
Ingredients
One 10-cup bundt pan. Serves 14.
- 85 g cocoa powder — see Cocoa and cocoa mixes
- 240 ml hot strong coffee
- 340 g all-purpose flour
- 8 g baking soda
- 5 g fine salt
- 225 g unsalted butter, softened
- 400 g granulated sugar
- 100 g light brown sugar
- 4 eggs
- 240 g full-fat sour cream
- 2 tsp vanilla — see Pure vanilla extract
- 150 g dark chocolate chips, tossed in a spoonful of the flour
Glaze:
- 150 g dark chocolate — see Chocolates
- 150 ml double cream
- 20 g honey or golden syrup
Method
Heat the oven to 175 °C / 350 °F. Grease and cocoa the pan obsessively.
Whisk the cocoa into the hot coffee and cool to lukewarm.
Cream the butter and both sugars four minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Alternate the flour, soda and salt with the sour cream, then mix in the cocoa liquid. Fold in the floured chocolate chips.
Bake 50–60 minutes, until a skewer comes out with moist crumbs.
Cool exactly ten minutes, then invert onto a rack. Cool completely before glazing.
Warm the cream, pour it over the chocolate, stand two minutes, stir smooth with the honey, and pour over the cake so it runs down the flutes.
Notes
- If it sticks, put the inverted pan back on a warm hob for 30 seconds, or wrap it in a hot damp towel for a minute, and try again.
- The same batter makes a good sheet cake at 175 °C for 35 minutes.
- Keeps five days and is the best-travelling cake in this folder — no frosting to smear, and the shape survives a car boot.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Cake recipes · cakes · baking equipment · Chocolates
Nearby: devils food cake · sour cream coffee cake · texas sheet cake