Football season is upon us which means watching “parties” rotating between 5 different homes. Host makes a main dish and others bring appetizers/side dishes to pass. I am the designated dessert provider for games not at my home. That means I’ll be making a dessert a minimum of 12 times between now and February and would like to do it without a repeat. So I’m researching recipes and have come across a few that call for baking in a bundt pan, which I don’t have.
So other then appearance is there any reason I couldn’t use these recipes but bake in a rectangular baking pan?
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Let’s move this over to where the baking experts hang out.
Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.
You may get less of a rise(and consequently reduce your number of servings) by not using a bundt or even an angel food cake pan. A bundt pan produces a cake that’s more festive-looking and eye-appealing, than a 9x13 or a casserole pan. Why not make your contribution as attractive as possible? If you’re on the hook for making 12 desserts, I’d invest in one. You can make many things with it, not just cakes: breads, layered dips, gelatin desserts, etc.
I don’t use them all the time, my life’s okay.
IME, the short distance from pan surface to cake center matters greatly with bundt and angel cakes. You can’t simply pour the same batter into a pan that might have “deeper” sections, or even a larger shallow area, and expect… the same results. Might be fine, but it won’t be the same.
Or maybe it’s just a case of once bundt, twice shy.
The middle of your cake may not cook through. Bundts allow for more surface area during cooking, so you can make a wetter (and possibly also more sugary) batter cook through before the outer crumb is burned.
Reducing the wet ingredients a bit may help. You could also add an egg white, to increase the rise and lower the temperature a bit to help it cook through.
Using an angel cake pan would probably work well enough, though the ridges in a bundt pan also help the batter cook through.
If you break down and buy one, don’t be tricked into getting the extra fancy ones with the sharp cuts in them. Get a good old fashioned rounded one.
The sharp bits tend to burn, and to stick and rip off when you try to get the cake out. Don’t torture yourself!
I wonder if you could just put an oven safe cup in the middle of your cake pan
They’re not very expensive, and any thrift store will have several. Get one.
Found that suggested as an alternative here - also suggestions on splitting into loaf pans (seems reasonable) and adjusting time/temp.
Just to add. use a 50 year old cast-iron bundt pan. My mom has one and I have stolen it a few times but she always finds it.
If you try the cup/ramekin method, I recommend letting it warm up with the oven to temperature before pouring in the dough. That will simulate the heat coming up through the metal of the bundt pan.
What, is this like a drinking but for dessert lovers? Every fourth down… “Bundt!”
A Bundt pan allows hot air to circulate through the middle - something you won’t get simply by putting a cup in the middle of a cake pan.
justmeetee, if I were in your position I would buy a Bundt pan. They’re not expensive, and this is something you’ll be doing more than once. By using a Bundt pan, you won’t have to experiment with the recipe to get it to come out right, and the cake will be more attractive than one baked in a rectangular pan.
What I like about our bundt pan is that the pattern it’s molded into makes for easy portion control.
You are thinking of baseball . . .
Th “bundt” was a pundt.
No, that’s football.
I was going somewhere with a friend this evening; she was going to swing by my place to pick me up. I went outside to wait and a car pulled up to the curb and partially blocked my driveway. A woman got out and asked if her car was okay there. I said it was probably fine as long as it wasn’t going to be there very long. She said no, she was only visiting a friend next door to pick something up. So she went to the house next door and chatted with the woman there for a few minutes and came back to her car carrying a bundt pan!
That wasn’t you, was it?
Martha Stewart will disown you forever.
I have recipes that I have made as a Bundt cake, sheet cake and as cupcakes. I think most recipes are adaptable like that. Just don’t ever fill a pan more than 2/3 full, and keep an eye on it and test for doneness when it looks/smells like it might be done. With that being said, I think you should get a Bundt pan. Some present so prettily that way, and would be weird to try to adapt I think (like rum cake, which is worth buying a Bundt pan for in itself).
I actually like cupcakes best for serving at those kinds of parties. Easier to serve and makes less of a mess.