KAF Year of the Bundt--recipes & chat (767 views)

Beth, I just came back to this thread b/c I iced my cake . . . recipe says it's freezable, even when glazed & iced. So you could freeze leftovers, if you have the strength to do so. I tasted the little bit that I cut off the bottom before flipping the cake out of the pan, and oh, my it's good! We won't have the cake till after dinner, but I have high hopes, plus it looks like its photo (I have the same pan as KAF used--my icing was a little runnier than theirs, but it's still pretty).

I have had 100% great luck with a liberal use of Baker's Joy flour-and-oil spray. Whenever I see a recipe's suggestion to carefully brush melted shortening or butter or something into all the design features of the pan, I cringe: who has that kind of time? and it's so easy to miss an area with a pastry brush. Just spray & go. Another hint is not to prep your pan until immediately before you're going to pour in the batter, b/c the prep material (Baker's Joy, whatever) will migrate downward otherwise, instead of staying stuck to all the sides & ensuring a good release.

By the way, the lemon cake tastes great!

Thanks for the Everbake suggestion. Good thing to place on my WL for their next sitewide discount.

As luck would have it, my daughter pronounced the lemon cake "too lemony." I have given up on trying to find the perfect lemon cake; she loves lemon but I guess that means just a touch of lemon? The Nothing Bundt Cakes lemon recipe is perfect (but ridiculously expensive); I've found several copycats online but have yet to try one.

My husband's office loves me b/c I keep sending him to work with slabs of lemon cake.

So today I attempted to make this Chai-Spiced Pound Cake using the tips from the KAF blog to prevent sticking, and I failed miserably.  The bottom came out, but the top stayed stuck and had to be forcibly removed.    (the crumbs taste delicious though) So do I give up for good or keep torturing myself???

gobluem82 - What were the tips?

I loosen the bundt cake with a knife all around and I giggle the cake a bit. I've used a Pampered Chef bundt for years and since you don't grease it, you have to make sure the cake and pan is totally cooled. The failures from that pan are because I didn't let the cake cook long enough. When I used a regular bundt pan, the key was to grease it well, from what I remember. I've recently read not to use flour since it isn't pretty when the cake come out, but to use sugar instead. Has anyone else heard that?

I'm making the Lemon Bliss Cake today! I may add some raspberries to the cake. I'm still thinking about that.

Oh boy, that Lemon Bliss Cake is a keeper. It's so good! I opted not to put raspberries in because the ones I had were frozen, and I didn't want the cake studded with raspberry mush. I do think fresh raspberries would be a great variation, but as is it is a great lemon cake. I used both the zest of two lemons AND 1/2 a teaspoon of lemon oil in the cake. I thought it was the perfect amount of lemon, and my family agreed. It has the texture of a great pound cake.

I really love bundt cakes, so I want to make my way through the year of the bundt. I use palm shortening to grease my pans- but I use my hand to rub it on the pan and make sure I get every nook and cranny and I never have a problem with a cake not coming out.

I made the Chocolate Fudge Bundt yesterday. When it came time to make the ganache for the top I discovered I was actually out of chocolate chips. Okay, I found a bag of Guittard white chocolate chunks, I could roll with that. Then I discovered my cream had soured.

So I melted the white chocolate chunks and folded that into a standard buttercream frosting and iced the cake. I had to frost the whole thing because this one stuck into the pan pretty good. Once it was frosted you'd never know though. In retrospect, I would have let this one cool completely in the pan before removing. It is a very delicate textured cake.

But wow, it's a keeper. The flavor is so rich and deep- definitely chocolate fudge. It is a lighter cake in texture, and while my frosting version is great, using actual ganache on top would be restaurant worthy. You can't taste the coffee at all in the finished product- my kids would have picked that out for certain. I'm definitely going to make this one again. What I especially loved is that it came together very quickly. You melt the butter with the cocoa and coffee, so there's no waiting for the butter to soften. Ten minutes or so to wait for the chocolate to cool down was easy, as I just got the other two parts of the batter ready and got the bundt pan coated in palm shortening in that time.

I'm a little disappointed to see that the "Year of the Bundt" is not a monthly thing like it seemed to have started out. I was looking forward to baking my way through twelve different bundt cakes. Maybe I'll just pull another highly rated one off of their website for every month they don't share one.