Baking a Bundt

Bundt cakes are impressive, especially if you've got a super fancy tin.  At Christmas time, Bundt cakes seem particularly festive covered in a little icing sugar.  In fact, that is one of the many impressive things about Bundt cakes - they can have as little or as much decoration as you want, the tin does the hard work, so you don't have to!

Talking of Bundt tins, they can be a bit pricey.  I was lucky in that I was given a well used one from my Mum.  It is a bit battered and a simple design but it did the job for my first ever Bundt bake.  Choosing the recipe was a little more difficult, having overdosed on chocolate over Christmas, I wanted to do something different, so spent some time trawling Internet recipes. I decided on this Lime and Blueberry recipe by Mary Berry. After a Christmas with a few satsumas as the only fruit, I tried to convince myself that a punnet of blueberries made for a slightly healthier cake. 

The recipe suggests that you line the tin with strips of baking paper, which I did but found that it made the lines in the tin less defined.  I have since read that cake release spray is a good way to make sure your cake comes out easily.  The recipe also suggested adding half the mix to the cake tin then adding the blueberries, then the rest of the mix.  After baking I was a bit disappointed with the distribution of the blueberries which were mostly near the top (bottom) which is also where most of the glaze featured, so all the excitement was in the first mouthful.  I would definitely look at other ways to incorporate the blueberries or maybe read up on tips for better distribution.  Finally, the Bundt wasn't really as tall as I'd wanted - probably because I'd used the wrong sized tin - next time I would add a bit more mixture to make the cake truly splendid!  It was still a big cake though, especially when there were only two of us eating it.

Overall, it made a really delicious cake with a nice texture.  The lime syrup was nicely tart and the cake wasn't overly sweet.  The Bundt design was fun - it looked like a giant doughnut and who doesn't like a doughnut?  Be warned, the Bundt tin is rather deceptive and even though you end up with a hole in it, your cake is still rather large and you may need some friends to help you with the eating.

I must admit that as I was pouring on the glaze, I wished that I'd decided to make a giant rum baba and that my glaze was booze filled - still there's always next time!