Vanilla Bundt Cake: Bundt Challenge #6.

It’s been such a busy half term week catching up on seeing family and friends. It’s gone all so quickly and within what seems like five minutes, I’m back to work and it’s Sunday again. But I love being busy!

Our first day back after February half term week was a training day for the school I work in and we had a shared lunch. Usually I bring in some sweet stuff to go with our coffee/ tea or to go after our lunch to keep us all going. So I decided to take a Bundt cake in with me along with a couple of other treats.

I didn’t have much time to bake on Sunday afternoon as I had been out with Mr S in the morning. I wanted something quick and simple, yet pretty to make. So for my sixth recipe from Bundt by Melanie Johnson, I wanted something uncomplicated and something which didn’t contain any strange or weird ingredients.

The Vanilla Bundt fitted the bill perfectly as I had all the ingredients in, apart from buttermilk. For some reason my local supermarket doesn’t stock it any more so I used sour cream in the recipe instead. I really hope this wouldn’t affect the taste of the cake.

I used my Nordicware Kugelhopf pan to create this Bundt. It’s been ages since I’ve used it. Maybe used once before the pandemic. I’ll check my photos but I know it’s one pan I need to use a lot more.

My Nordicware Kugelhopf pan.

To start with, I greased the Kugelhopf pan with some melted butter and dusted with flour as suggested in Mel’s recipe. I have found that the quantities for the cake greasing given alongside the ingredients in the main cake have been hugely beneficial to me and to the success in having the cake come out of the tin in one piece. This was something that didn’t always happen to me beforehand!

For the actual cake, all ingredients were put into the mixing bowl and whisked together until well combined. Butter, caster sugar, self raising flour, vanilla extract, soured cream (in place of buttermilk) and eggs. Then it was spooned into the tin carefully.

The mixture is ready to go into the oven.

I baked the Bundt for just under an hour (maybe about 58 minutes) and put it to cool on my wire rack for about 10 minutes until it was time to get the Bundt out of the tin.

The tall, elegant Kugelhopf pan made this beautiful cake shape and it slid out perfectly. The only thing I had to do was to slice off a tiny bit of cake off the bottom so that it would sit flat. It had come out with a little dome which would make it rock about if not!

The Vanilla Bundt slid out of my Kugelhopf pan perfectly.

Apart from a little bit which had caught at the sides, the Bundt cake came out exactly how I wanted it.

While the Bundt cooled down completely, I got on with a couple of other baking jobs.

Vanilla Kugelhopf Bundt Cake complete with glacé icing and sprinkles.

The icing/ decorating suggestion for the Vanilla Bundt was a choice of either simply dusting the cake with icing sugar or making up some buttercream frosting and spreading it all over the cake with sprinkles on top. I wanted to show off the shape of the beautiful Kugelhopf pan and have some sprinkles as well. So I chose a compromise- a simple glacé icing drizzled on top so that the icing ran down the sides of the cake in the grooves.

The sprinkles were some leftover ones from a couple of different packs. I had decanted them into one big tub to use on cupcakes.

The glacé icing helped to show off the elegant Kugelhopf Bundt cake by it running down the sides of the cake into the grooves.

I had to cut the cake up to take it to work as I don’t have any circular plastic cake boxes left. One got broken when the lid got a hole in it and my daughter borrowed the other one taking a cake into her workplace. It never returned despite me nagging her to bring it back!

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx