Tips for baking the perfect Bundt

  • Spray inside of pan with baking spray that contains flour. DO NOT use regular cooking spray, as it gums up the nonstick on your pan and is not meant for releasing sugars. Use a real bristle pastry brush (not the silicone bristle kind) to spread the nonstick spray evenly over every surface inside the pan, including the cone. You should not see any lumps or visible signs of the coating. Alternately, you may use the traditional grease/flour or butter/cocoa method of prepping the pan too.
  • Always use a recipe or mix that’s meant for a Bundt pan. Regular cake mixes from the grocery store don’t really work well in our pans because they contain a lot of leavening and turn out light and fluffy, whereas ones that require ingredients like sour cream, butter, yogurt, cream, etc. have better results in our pans.
  • Pour batter into the prepared pan so that the pan or cavity is about 3/4 full, but never more than this or it will overflow.
  • Take the pan and pound it quite firmly against a hard surface such as the floor or a cutting board. Do this about a dozen times. What you are doing is getting rid of the air bubbles in the cake batter, which are what leave little tiny holes and marks on the exterior of the cake. Those don’t look pretty, and this will eliminate most of them. If you use the countertop, put a dishtowel down first.
  • Before putting in the oven, tilt the pan to the side so the batter starts to run up the side of the pan a bit, then rotate the pan around so that the batter starts up the side of the pan the entire way around. this helps to eliminate the ‘mounding’ in the middle of the cake that is sometimes an issue.
  • Bake on a middle oven shelf, not top or bottom. The typical Bundt cooking temperature is 160-175°C for 50-60 minutes.
  • Once finished, let cake cool for ONLY 7-10 minutes on the counter or stovetop. Don’t try to remove the cake from the pan prior to this or tearing/crumbling may occur. If you leave it more than 10 minutes, the sugars start to set up and harden and it gets increasingly more difficult to remove the cake from the pan. Once you’ve extricated it from the pan and onto the rack, let it cool fully before trying to move it.
  • If you flip the pan over after 10 min and the cake doesn’t easily come out, try teasing the edges and centre with a dull butter knife or something similar. DO NOT run a knife around the inside of the pan to loosen it.