Traditional vanilla Bundt cake

I'm not bringing you one bundt cake recipe but three: first, a basic and essential one for any home, the recipe to make a vanilla bundt cake easy and delicious. That same recipe can be turned, in a very simple way, into a lemon bundt or an almond bundt cake. At the end of the post I'll tell you how.

Bundt cakes are a very showy way to make traditional sponge cakes, so this vanilla bundt cake, as easy as it is quick to prepare, couldn't be missing from our recipe collection. I hope you enjoy it as much as we always do at home.

Remember that you can add any topping you like to this bundt. Chocolate certainly goes wonderfully with vanilla flavor, but you might want to caramelize some walnuts or macadamia nuts and sprinkle them on top with a good drizzle of honey, add chocolate or coconut shavings, make a syrup, or simply dust with a little icing sugar. The bundt cake is beautiful as is, so you can either leave it plain and natural or choose to decorate it. What will you do?

Ingredients

• 240 gr unsalted butter, softened
• 250 gr sugar
• 6 large eggs (300 grams), room temperature
• 1 tbsp (13 grams) vanilla extract
• 375 gr flour
• 1 tsp (3 grams) salt
• ½ tsp (2.5 grams) baking powder
• 240 ml whole milk, room temperature

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
2. In the bowl of your KitchenAid, with the whisk attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy, 5 to 7 minutes.
3. Reduce the mixer speed to low. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Stir in the vanilla.
5. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking powder (you can use the KitchenAid sifter attachment to measure the ingredients while sifting them, the cake will be airier). Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with adding the milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
6. Prepare the bundt pan with baking spray or by brushing with butter (we used the Brilliance pan).
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Tap the pan on the countertop several times to settle the batter in the pan and release any air bubbles if present.
8. Place the pan in the oven, on a middle/lower rack, and bake until golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean (about 1 hour). You will also see the cake appear to pull away from the sides. Remove from the oven and let the pan cool for 10 minutes (if you try to unmold it immediately, it could break because it's so tender).
9. After the 10 minutes of resting, invert to unmold and let it cool on a wire rack.

Once cool, if you like you can glaze it with chocolate or lemon icing. Feeling adventurous? Here's a very simple and effective topping to make a quick lemon glaze:

Lemon glaze: add the juice of 1 lemon to 120 gr of icing sugar little by little, stirring continuously until you reach the desired consistency. If it's not enough, add a teaspoon of water.

Variations to make other cakes!

You can vary this cake in the simplest way to obtain other very delicious bundt cakes:

To make a Lemon Cake: to make a lemon bundt replace the vanilla extract with 1 tablespoon (3 grams) of lemon zest; you should add the lemon zest when you have beaten the butter and sugar. Keep the rest of the directions the same, but do not add the vanilla.

For an Almond Cake: if you want an almond bundt, replace 1½ teaspoons (6 grams) of almond extract for the vanilla extract, or a couple of tablespoons of La Tourongelle almond oil! You can also replace 50gr of the wheat flour with almond flour to boost the flavor. This bundt will be great with a chocolate topping onto which, while still warm, you sprinkle ground almonds on top.

Notes

• We used the Brilliance pan from Nordic Ware to make this cake, but you can make exactly the same recipe in other Nordic Ware pans!Here you can see all the ones we have in the shop and the most popular.
• I mentioned some toppings in the introduction and in the recipe for this bundt, but you can also add chocolate chips or chopped walnuts or almonds... Experiment with your favorite flavors and you'll get it right! You can add them to the batter when it's ready to go into the pan while it's still in the bowl: fold them into the batter and mix well so the add-ins are evenly distributed

Remember that this Sunday the 15th of November is National Bundt Cake Day! You have a mandatory date with your pans and the oven, and we look forward to seeing your bundts with the hashtag #bundtdayC&J, so we can see the beautiful bundts you'll make! Find us on Instagram.