All-New Cake Mix Doctor - Anne Byrn [76]
The Bundt pan is as much a fixture in today’s kitchen as a brownie pan. And the straight-sided tube pan has been around as long as America has been baking angel food and pound cakes. They both have a nostalgic quality to them, and the new decorative Bundt shapes are appealing to young cooks and families. What eight-year-old wouldn’t want his birthday cake in the shape of a sand castle? Personally, I love my cathedral Bundt pan and the Bundt pan shaped like a big cupcake that my daughters gave me for my birthday. But I also love the tube pan that sits alongside the Bundts in the bottom kitchen drawer. It was my mom’s pan which she used to bake her chocolate pound cake and sour cream coffee cake and, on really special occasions, her angel food cake. From one pan comes many edible memories.
The recipes in this chapter are a wonderful varied lot and will, I hope, create edible memories for you. Beginning with lemon and fruit and moving into spice and then chocolate and then cakes with alcohol, they are all worth baking. The recipe may suggest they be baked in a Bundt or a tube, but you can bake them in either pan. Keep in mind that the Bundts often bake a little faster, about five minutes, than the tubes using the same recipe.
Throughout this chapter I help you through the process of baking a Bundt cake—from prepping the pan to inverting the cake to glazing it. And I include storage tips with each recipe because it’s impossible for most families to finish a cake in one sitting. Leftover cake in the freezer has become my insurance plan. I know I can serve dessert at any hour, any day, since the frozen cake is quickly thawed with the help of the microwave and dressed up with ice cream.
As with the layer cakes, you will recognize some old-time favorites in this chapter—the Darn Good Chocolate Cake, Kathy’s Cinnamon Breakfast Cake, Susan’s Lemon Cake, and Stacy’s Chocolate Chip Cake. They’re back, and I have tweaked my original recipes to make them lighter in fat but still have that great signature flavor. I’ve streamlined the Piña Colada Cake recipe, improved the Zucchini Cake with Penuche Glaze, and have made the Amazing German Chocolate Cake more amazing. I hope you agree.
Others I love include the Lemon Cake with a Blueberry Crown—where fresh blueberries sink to the bottom of the Bundt pan and when inverted form a crown at the top—as well as Cathy’s Marbled Spice Cake, Maple Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze, Jewish Pound Cake, Apricot Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Filling, and Chocolate Espresso Pound Cake.
I’ll stop here. I know as well as you do that this process is subjective and my favorites may not be your favorites. That makes baking cakes and writing about them so much fun. I develop an array of recipes, knowing I’ve got something for everyone!
LEMON CAKE WITH A BLUEBERRY CROWN
serves:
12 to 16
prep:
20 minutes
bake:
40 to 45 minutes
cool:
40 minutes
I DIDN’T PLAN A LEMON CAKE with a blueberry crown—true confession! I envisioned a lemon cake with blueberries throughout, but after baking and cooling it I found all of the fresh blueberries I had folded into the batter had sunk right to the bottom of the Bundt pan. And when I inverted the pan onto a rack, the cake was lemon on the bottom with what looked like a crown of blueberries resting on top. Drizzled with a light lemony glaze—or just sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar—this was simply regal, please pardon the pun.
For the cake
Vegetable oil spray, for misting the pan
Flour, for dusting the pan
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow or vanilla cake mix
1½ cups fresh blueberries
1 package (3 ounces) lemon gelatin
2/3 cup hot water
2/3 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
For the glaze (optional)
2 medium-size lemons
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1. Make the cake: Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly mist a 12-cup