Baking with a square bundt cake pan
What inspires you to bake a cake? A birthday? An office party? Maybe you’re overpowered by a sweet tooth. Or perhaps you find a new recipe or a cute baking pan. My friend—a cake baker extraordinaire—recently fell for a new bundt pan. It wasn’t just any old Bundt pan with a swirl pattern and a hole in the middle. It was a square Bundt pan. Frankly, I’d never seen one in that shape.
A Blissful Bundt Cake
She already has a square cake dish, so it seemed right that she should have a square bundt pan as well. I agree. The new purchase also necessitated a Bundt cake cookbook. (As we all know, when buying a new cookbook, one excuse is as good as another.) Flipping through the pages, I found that you can cook far more things in the ring-shaped pan than a cake. There were recipes for monkey bread, sticky buns, even a Bundt version of the old sausage-egg-cheese casserole.
My friend did a test run on the new square pan by making a new carrot-coconut cake from the new book. She brought it to the farm for the weekend, but forgot the square cake dish. Even so, it was a lovely, unique, and tasty cake. And the “snowcap” of icing gave it a handsome, lighter look. She even took photos of the steps involved, which I know, for a fact, doubles your time in the kitchen.
Carrot Bundt Cake
Ingredients:
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour- 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1-1/4 cups vegetable oil
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 3 cups grated carrots
- 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
- 1 cup chopped toasted walnuts
- Recipe for Cream Cheese Glaze
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flourDirections:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.* In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
Using mixer and a large bowl, beat together granulated sugar, brown sugars and oil on medium speed until combined. Beat in eggs, one at a time and continue beating for 3 minutes more. With mixer on low, add flour mixture in three additions. Using a spatula, fold in carrots, coconut and walnuts. Transfer batter to prepared 10-cup Bundt pan that’s been sprayed (Round or square pan, either one)
Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 60 minutes or until puffed and golden and a tester inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pan 15 minutes, then invert onto wire rack to cool.
Pour Cream Cheese Glaze over cake and let it drip down the sides. Decorate with pecan halves, if desired. Let set 20 minutes before serving.
*Note: Original recipe suggests cooking at 325 degrees if the Bundt pan is dark in color.
Cream Cheese Glaze:
- 4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 3 to 4 Tbs. milk
Beat cream cheese until very creamy. Beat in powdered sugar. Stir in vanilla. Add 3 Tbs. milk (and more, if needed for desired consistency). Drizzle glaze over cooled cake.
