Lighter Lemon Pound Cake #BundtBakers

This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries. 

For this month’s Bundt Bakers, our host chose “angel or devil” as the theme.  I interpreted this as healthy cake (relatively speaking) vs. decadent cake so I put on my thinking cap and started to Google search lighter pound cake. 

I came across all sorts of “lighter” pound cakes! Apparently it’s a thing. Who knew? Many of them claimed to be lighter but had a whole cup of butter and an equal amount of sugar. Umm, no. That’s regular pound cake. 

Lighter Lemon Pound Cake

I used “brown sugar” Swerve to bake these cakes to make them more diabetic friendly and I baked the batter in a Nordic Ware Duet pan, which has a capacity of 5 cups. It’s perfect for making one cake to keep and one to share. Which is the best “lighten up” option! Sharing is caring. If you bake yours in a 6-cup Bundt pan, it might need just a little longer in the oven. This recipe was adapted from one on Just a Pinch. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup or 180g cake flour, plus extra for pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons butter, softened, plus extra for pan

3/4 cup, packed, or 75g Swerve or light brown sugar

1/2 cup or 120g sour cream

Zest 1 lemon 

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 egg, at room temperature

1 egg white, at room temperature

2 tablespoons milk

Recommended for serving: 

Greek yogurt lightly sweetened with Swerve or sugar

Fresh berries

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 5- or 6-cup Bundt pan by greasing it with butter and coating it with flour.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the butter and Swerve/sugar until creamy and lighter in color.

Add sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg,  egg white and milk to the butter mixture. 

Beat 2 minutes on high speed.

Add flour mixture. 

Beat on lowest speed, no more than 10 seconds, until just combined.

Spoon the cake batter into your prepared Bundt pans.

Place on one rack above middle in the oven. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Cool for about 7 minutes on a wire rack then use a wooden skewer to loosen the sides and middle then turn the cakes out of the pan. Cool completely. 

This cake is wonderful plain or if you want to fancy it up, with a dollop of Greek yogurt, sweetened with a little more Swerve or sugar, topped with fresh berries. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the third Thursday of the month so welcome to Bundt Bakers! As mentioned above, our host chose angel or devil as our theme. Check out how our bakers interpreted that theme below. Many thanks to Rebekah of Making Miracles for hosting!

• Sneha’s Recipe: Black & White Pound Bundt
• Passion Kneaded: Chocolate Overload Bundt Cake
• Patyco Candybar: Dark Angel Bundt Cake
• Magical Ingredients: Devil's Black Forest Bundt Cake
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Devil's Bundt Cake
• All That's Left Are The Crumbs: Devil's Food Cake Bundt with Chili Caramel Sauce 
• Food Lust People Love: Lighter Lemon Pound Cake
• Making Miracles: The Devil's Mini Bundt Cakes 

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Lighter Lemon Pound Cake!

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Chocolate Peppermint Bundt #BundtBakers

This Chocolate Peppermint Bundt starts with a mint chocolate batter, baked up tender, finished with peppermint glaze and crushed peppermint candy canes, perfect flavors for the holiday season!

This month’s Bundt Bakers event is special! Rather than choosing an ingredient or theme, our host Patricia of PatyCo Candybar asked us to choose a cake made by one of our fellow bakers to recreate. Gosh, was it hard to choose just one! 

Some of us have been baking Bundts together each month for almost 10 years so that’s a lot of lovely cakes to choose from. I scrolled down the list on our Bundt Bakers’ page and, honestly, it was a struggle. I love so many of them! I finally decided on the chocolate peppermint Bundt from Rebekah of Making Miracles because the flavors sounded perfect for the holiday season. 

If you haven’t been over to Rebekah’s blog yet, you might not know that her blog name, Making Miracles, is a reference to the beautiful babies she gave birth to as a surrogate. Several families are more complete because she was willing to help them fulfill their dream of having children. She is an amazing mom herself and a special, generous, caring person! 

Chocolate Peppermint Bundt

The original instructions say to use a 12-cup Bundt pan so, of course, I did, but I think this batter would fit quite comfortably in a 10-cup pan as well. 

Ingredients

For the cake:

1 cup or 240ml boiling water

6 tablespoons or 30g unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra for the pan

2 1/2 cups or 312g flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup or 57g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for the pan

3/4 cup or 150g sugar

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup or 162g full fat plain yogurt

1/4 cup or 45g semisweet chocolate chips

For the glaze:

3/4 cup or 94g powdered sugar, sifted

1 to 2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon butter, melted and cooled

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

1 peppermint candy cane (.44 oz or 12.5g), crushed

To decorate:

1 peppermint candy cane (.44 oz or 12.5g), crushed

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 12-cup Bundt pan by generously buttering and lightly coating it with sifted cocoa powder. 

Pour the boiling water into a heatproof measuring vessel then add the cocoa and whisk till it has completely dissolved. Set the mixture aside to cool. 

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Use electric beaters or your stand mixer on medium speed to cream together the butter, sugar and peppermint extract.  Add the first egg and beat again.

Add the following two eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. 

Blend the yogurt into the mixture, followed by the cooled cocoa mixture. 

Fold in the flour mixture in batches until just until combined (do not over mix).  

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the prepared Bundt pan and smooth; tap pan once or twice sharply to remove any air bubbles. 

Bake 40-45 minutes, until cake begins to pull away from edges of pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

Carefully invert the cake onto the rack and allow to cool completely (or invert directly onto a cake plate if preferred).

For the glaze, combine the powdered sugar, milk, butter, and peppermint extract in a small bowl, starting with just 1 tablespoon of the milk. Add more milk a little at a time until you reach pouring consistency. You may not need it all. 

Crush the candy canes in a plastic baggie using a rolling pin or a the flat side of a meat tenderizer. Stir half of the crushed candy canes into the glaze. 

Drizzle or pour the glaze over the cake then sprinkle the top with the remaining crushed candy cane. 

Allow the glaze to set before slicing to serve. 

Enjoy! 

As I mentioned above, it’s time for December’s edition of Bundt Bakers! Check out all the tributes to our Bundt Baker friends below. Many thanks to Patricia of Patyco Candybar for hosting! 

• Apple Almond Coffee Cake with Honey Glaze (from A Day in the Life on the Farm) by Making Miracles
• Chocolate Peppermint Bundt (from Making Miracles) by Food Lust People Love
• Cookies and Cream Mini Bundts (from Food Lust People Love) by Sneha’s Recipe
• Dutch Speculaas Bundt Cake (from Tartacadabra) by All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Magical Ingredients Honey Cake by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Weicher Lebkuchen – Soft German Gingerbread Bundt Cake (from Food Lust People Love) by Patyco Candybar
  

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Chocolate Peppermint Bundt!

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Cider Spice Bundt Cake #BundtBakers

This cider spice Bundt cake will fill your house with the most wonderful aroma as it bakes. The tender crumb lives up to that promise. Delicious!

If you’ve ever perused New York Times Cooking, you know that one of the most useful features of having a subscription is access to the notes people leave when they’ve made a recipe. “Did it work as written?” being the most important. 

In the case of this cake, many agreed it did not! The most frequent comment said that the batter was thick, not thin as described in the instructions. Also, the cake didn’t rise and was very dense. Well, most people would step away quickly and scroll on to another recipe. But I am not most people! I decided that the “bones” were good and those were problems I could fix. 

I’m pleased to tell you that I did. By adding extra liquid in the form of orange juice and another egg, along with baking powder and more baking soda, this cake turns out light yet moist. It’s the kind of cake you keep on the countertop in the kitchen and it just disappears because your family keeps cutting themselves a small slice as they pass by. So good! It would be perfect for the holidays.

Cider Spice Bundt Cake

For this recipe, I used Strongbow Original, a traditional dry English cider, which contains alcohol. Substitute another dry alcoholic or non-alcoholic cider if you can’t get Strongbow in your neck of the woods. Here in Houston, we buy it at Total Wine. This recipe was adapted from one in New York Times Cooking. 

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups or 281g all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus extra for the pan, if desired

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 cup or 227g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for the pan

1 cup, packed, or 200g light brown sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons freshly grated orange zest

1/4 cup or 60ml orange juice

1/2 cup or 120ml unsulfured molasses (not blackstrap)

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup or 180ml dry apple cider (I used Strongbow Original.)

Optional: icing sugar to dust

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 9- or 10-cup Bundt by brushing it generously with melted butter and flouring it liberally. Sometimes I dust with a little extra ground cinnamon as well after the flour, putting it in a tiny strainer to distribute it evenly. I did that for this cake because more cinnamon is a good thing.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Set aside.

Working in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using an electric mixer), cream together the butter and brown sugar on medium until smooth. 

Add eggs, orange zest and juice, and beat on medium-high speed, about 1 minute.

In a separate large bowl or liquid measuring cup, add the molasses and baking soda. 

In a small saucepan, bring the apple cider to a boil over high; pour it very slowly over the molasses and baking soda and whisk until combined. The mixture will froth up a lot so make sure you use a big enough vessel to contain it! 

Beat in half of the flour half the cider mixture to the butter mixture on low until combined. When it’s blended, scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the rest of the flour and cider, beating again till it's well combined. 

Carefully pour the batter into your prepared pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Let cake cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool fully.

Once cool, dust with some icing sugar, if desired. 

 

Enjoy! (With a glass of cider, if you'd like. Someone's got to drink the rest of that can, after all.)

It's time for Bundt Bakers and this month we are sharing recipes with spice! Check out all the links below!

• Apple Bundt Cake from Palatable Pastime
• Carrot Cake Bundt from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Cider Spice Bundt Cake from Food Lust People Love
• Leftover Cake Spiced Bundt Pudding from Sneha's Recipe
• Kiss of Cherries Bundt Cake from Patyco Candybar

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Cider Spice Bundt Cake!

 .

Gateau de Sirop – Cajun Cane Syrup Cake #BundtBakers

Gateau de sirop - syrup cake - is a Cajun sweet treat made with Steen’s cane syrup, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Its tender crumb is so full of flavor! And the aroma as it bakes? Divine.

The whole area around the town I was born was, and still is, sugar cane country. In fact, New Iberia, Louisiana even hosts the Sugar Cane Festival each year on the fourth weekend in September. (Not this year though, of course, due to COVID.) The festival celebrates the crop that was first planted by Jesuit priests for their own use back in 1751, near what is now New Orleans. Farmer Etienne deBoré planted his first crop in 1794 and the economy of south Louisiana changed forever.

Here's a fact you may not know about sugar cane: It's a grass. That means that when the crop is cut down, it continues to grow! New seed cane is planted regularly to replenish the stocks and to introduce variety but some cane plants can be several years old and still produce good cane.  

For all of my growing up years, during sugar cane season, my grandfather would come home with several long stalks of cane. We’d all sit outside on the back steps and he would use a sharp pen knife to peel the cane and cut it into small pieces we could chew on. 

As we bit down, the fibrous cane would release the sweetest juice, some of which would always ending running down my chin, especially if my piece of cane was big. I often ended up a sticky mess but it was so worth it!

My mother’s mother grew up not far away in Abbeville, Louisiana, home of Steen’s cane syrup which is still made the old fashioned way, by cooking cane juice down until it’s thick and rich. Nothing else is added.

Gateau de Sirop – Cajun Cane Syrup Cake

If you’ve been reading along here for a while, you might have seen my other grandmother’s copy of the Steen’s recipe booklet when I shared her fig preserves recipe. This recipe was adapted from one in that booklet. But you can also find it online. From their website comes this baking tip as well: Measure the oil first, then use the same cup to measure the syrup. The thin layer of oil remaining in the cup will help the syrup pour right out of the cup without clinging. 

Ingredients

2-3 tablespoons butter for greasing the pan

1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil

1 1/2 cups or 355ml Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup, plus extra for drizzling on the baked cake, if desired

1 large egg

2 1/2 cups or 313g all-purpose flour, plus extra for flouring the pan

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 cup or 180ml boiling water

Method 

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare a 10-cup Bundt pan by coating it with butter and then dusting it with flour. This is a sticky cake so you want to be generous with this step. Mine stuck at the bottom and I regretted choosing my Nordic Ware fleur de lis pan to bake it in. A less intricate pan would probably release more easily. I did finally manage to get it out, as you can see, but it wasn’t easy!

In a large bowl, combine the oil, syrup and egg. 

Carefully whisk to blend thoroughly. If you are too vigorous as you start whisking, the oil tends to fly around and outside of the mixing bowl. Ask me how I know. 

Measure flour, spices and salt into another bowl and sift them into the cake bowl. Again, whisk to blend.

 

Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water then stir this mixture into the batter. 

Pour the batter into your prepared pan. 

Bake 50-55 minutes or until springy to the touch and a wooden skewer comes out clean. 

Remove the gateau de sirop from the oven and place it on a rack to cool for a few minutes. 

Loosen the edges with the wooden skewer and then invert it on a cake plate. Drizzle with a little extra syrup, if desired.

When cool, slice to serve.

Enjoy!

It’s the third Thursday of the month so that means it’s Bundt Bakers time. As you might guess from the recipe titles, we are sharing cakes made with syrup. Check them out below. Many thanks to our host, Sue of Palatable Pastime for this fun theme!

• Apple Cider Syrup Bundt by Palatable Pastime
• Apricot & Golden Syrup Bundt by Sneha's Recipe
• Banana Bundt with Arequipe Syrup by patyco candybar
• Gateau de Sirop - Cajun Cane Syrup Cake by Food Lust People Love
• Root Beer Bundt by A Day in the Life on the Farm

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Gateau de Sirop!

 .

Snickers Bundt Cake #BundtBakers

This Snickers Bundt Cake is rich and super chocolate-y with a tender crumb. The Snickers pieces sink to the bottom of the pan while baking which means the top of the cake is full of them! Pour yourself a cold glass of milk and enjoy a large slice!

This month our Bundt Bakers host is Patricia from PatyCo Candy Bar and since May is the month we celebrate mothers, she encouraged us to use Mom’s favorite candy bar as inspiration or an ingredient to bake our Bundts. What a lovely idea!

I sent my mom a quick text, “What’s your favorite candy bar?” fully expecting her to say Heavenly Hash, a marshmallow confection with almonds, covered in chocolate. Honestly it’s the only candy bar I can ever recall her eating. Since the Elmer's brand (her favorite) are only available during the Easter season (and in Louisiana - where they are made) Mom usually has a supply in the deep freezer for when a craving comes on the rest of the year. 

You are probably ahead of me here since I’ve named this post Snickers Bundt Cake. That was indeed her surprising response. 

Snickers Bundt Cake

If you search “Snickers Cake” there are all sorts of recipes online but I kept this simple, making a devil’s food cake batter and just adding Snickers to that. It got several thumbs-up from family and friends. 

Ingredients

2 cups or 250g flour

2 cups or 400g sugar

3/4 cup or 90g natural unsweetened cocoa powder 

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup or 240ml canola or other light oil

1 cup or 240ml milk

1 cup or 240ml coffee - cooled but not cold

2 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

12 mini Snickers bars (3 1/2 oz or 100g by weight if you are cutting up larger bars) plus extra to decorate if desired

Method

Preheat oven to 375˚F or 190°C. Thoroughly grease a 10” Bundt pan and coat it with cocoa.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut the mini Snickers into six pieces each.

 

Add them to the dry ingredients and stir to coat so that they don’t stick together.

In a separate large bowl add the oil, milk, coffee, eggs and vanilla. Whisk to create a rich batter. Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Fold until well combined.

Pour the cake batter into your prepared pan.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. 

Leave the cake to cool for about 10 minutes in the pan and then run your skewer around the outside and middle of the cake to loosen it. Turn it over onto a wire rack to continue cooling. 

If you are using Snickers to decorate the edge of the cake, cut the mini Snickers in three slices, like a loaf of bread and put them around the outside. Ideally do this when the cake is still a bit warm. The Snicker pieces will start to melt slightly. As they do, press them into the cake so they’ll stick. 

Leave to cool completely before cutting in slices to serve. 

Enjoy! 

Check out all the wonderful candy bar Bundt cakes! Many thanks to our host, Patricia 

• Almond Joy Inspired Bundt Cake from Magical Ingredients
• Coconut Slice Bundt from Sweet Sensations
• Hershey's Chocolate Almond Bar Bundt from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Hershey's Cookies'n'Creme Bundt Cake from Patyco Candybar
• Nuggle Mini Bundt Cakes from Passion Kneaded
• Snickers Bundt Cake from Food Lust People Love
  
  

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

Pin this Snickers Bundt Cake! 

 .