Blueberry Lemon Bundt Cake
because you are some kind of baking genius now
things you’ll need: a Bundt pan (which also fulfills some deep inner heretofore unknown domestic desire), blueberries (preferably from that one blueberry lady at the farmer’s market, you know the one), butter, sugar, lemon (obvi), flour, baking powder, salt, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, the baking spray that specifically says “with flour” or else you may never get the Bundt out of its pan and then you will just have to eat it with a fork directly from the pan which isn’t such a terrible fate, powdered sugar and more lemon.
adapted from the ever-trustworthy Deb Perelman using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen which was adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson.
incidentally vegetarian. not gluten-free, but King Arthur does have a very tried and true GF Bundt recipe here. I barely know how to bake, so you’ll have to consult some other wizard for vegan options, but I’d bet it involves a whole lotta coconut milk.
Chapter 171
Having tackled banana bread, muffins, cake, and scones, you are feeling domestic as fuck. Like, maybe you have been the kind of person who just shows up to someone’s house with baked goods instead of the bottle of wine (6-pack of beer) that they just picked up on their way over.
What the fuck is a Bundt anyway? This classic, but also super dated, cake with a hole in it represents something deeply domestic in its Americanness but also hints at something immigrant and othered.
Turns out that it’s exactly that. The google machine explains that Nordic Ware was established in 1946 by a Danish lady with a wealth of Scandinavian recipes and her husband, who just happened to have a degree in chemical engineering with a specialty in metallurgy. In a classic tale of American whiteness and opportunity, they started making bakeware that catered to specific Scandinavian foods and did pretty well.
The story, according to this article, is that a nice group of Ashkenazi Jewish ladies approached these nice Nordic people and asked them to help make this one kind of pan for their Gugelhupf, a cake with a hole in it, which they referred to as “bund” (sound like bundt) cake… which is kind of like calling in a party cake. These lovely Nordic people were like, “Sure, we’ll make your super-specific cake pan even though a very small population of people will ever use it!” and they did, but it was not as successful as their Krumkake iron or Ebelskiver pan and they almost stopped making it (GASP).
Enter the super whiteness of the American south and the "Tunnel of Fudge Cake," which takes 2nd place in the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest somewhere in Texas, and suddenly Bundts are fucking everywhere.
Anyway, you bought a Bundt pan because you bake things now and maybe some deep Ashkenazi part of you was whispering Make a Kugelhupf, or perhaps you just think they look really fucking cool and you want to say things like “Have you seen my Bundt Pan?” because now you are a person with a Bundt pan and that seems to matter. Who knows? You are a complicated person (who now owns a Bundt pan).
When baking something for the first time, you stick to the flavors you most love (lemon blueberry, ride or die) and the recipe witches (and wizards) you most trust. In this case, that’s Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen. However, all the internet people agree that you need to spray your Bundt pan with a baking spray that contains flour and then put that pan in the fridge so that the fats stay in all the various many nooks and crannies of your Bundt pan. Having prepped the pan, you are ready to bake.
You still giggle when you read “cream the butter”, but you get what that means now and the purpose that it serves, namely creating air pockets to fluff your baked good as it bakes. Yes, you can overbeat the butter. Yes, you can completely fuck up baking before you even add flour. Yes, you have developed a bit of instinct on this one and the spirit contained in your hand-me-down stand mixer won’t allow for a dense kougelhopf-ish cake.
So, you cream the fuck out of your butter, sugar, and lemon zest (from two lemons because you can’t stop yourself at just one). Then, you add your 3 room temp eggs, one at a time, and mix until JUST combined, because every recipe is constantly cautioning you against over-mixing and you have developed a mild complex about it.
Because you are a boss baker now, you weigh your dry ingredients because volume measuring is for schmucks and rubes. You’ve weighed and whisked together your flour, baking POWDER (you double-checked that it said POWDER and not SODA about 300 times), and salt like a champ. You’ve also measured out your buttermilk and mixed it with vanilla extract, fully prepared for the combination stage which is when shit gets real.
With your mixer gently paddling everything together, stopping only to occasionally scrape down the sides, add 1/3 of your flour mix, mix until just combined, add half of the liquid, mix until just combined, add another 1/3 of your flour mix, mix until just combined, add the other half of the liquid, mix until just combined, then add the rest of the flour mix, and (all together now) mix until just combined.
Toss an entire quart of blueberries with 2 Tablespoons of flour (because Deb says so) and fold the fruit into the thick-ass batter and do not freak out that it’s so thick because Deb told you to expect this.
Take your pan from the fridge and spoon the batter into the mold in reasonable plops until it’s all in. Then you can smooth it over a little. Your Bundt should be like 3/4ish full because this gugelhopf-ish is gonna rise.
After some amount of time between 55 minutes (at 350) and forever, your wooden tester (skewer) finally comes out clean. Take the pan out to cool and DO NOT FLIP IT OVER YET! Wait AT LEAST 30 minutes (but maybe an hour) before you attempt to turn out this Bundt dream come true.
When you do finally turn the cake out and the whole thing slips easily from its pan, you understand why the spray can is labeled “Perfect Release” even though it sounds dirty, because the look of your perfectly turned Bundt definitely gives you feelings in your hungry places.
Fuck up the icing by using too much lemon juice and not enough sugar, because that’s on brand for you. Then share this party cake with as many (or as few) people as you wish, Bundt Maven.
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