BUNDT PAN MAGIC

Cathy Barrow explains how she finally got her cake out of its pan.

In any compendium of foods that serve a crowd, the Bundt cake is a star. It is pretty, its number of slices can be stretched and it holds for days under cover, all of which makes it ideal for a house full of company or for carrying to a cake worthy occasion.

The Bundt was not always so ubiquitous. In 1966, Pillsbury Bake-Off judges awarded second place to a dessert called the Tunnel of Fudge Cake. Moist, chocolate and produced in a Bundt pan, it magically created a thick ribbon of dark chocolate as it baked.

Not only was this cake a forerunner to millions of molten lava cakes served in the intervening decades, but it made the Bundt pan a musthave for home bakers.

Nordicware, from Minnesota-don’t-you-know, has been in the cast aluminum Bundt pan business since the early 1950s.

A modern twist on the kugelhopf pan, Bundt pans are available in 10- and 15-cup sizes, as well as mini-Bundts.

A pan with a 10-cup capacity will serve 12 to 16. The Bavaria Bundt I used for the accompanying recipe has deep crevices and design details and has been in my cupboard for at least 20 years. But it has mostly been gathering dust.

Why? Because I could never count on the cake coming out in one piece.

Left with bits still attached to those adorable crevices and pleats, I couldn’t show off said cake on my footed cake server. That chunk nibbled out of the side meant that I had to serve it already sliced — which was not the way to a showstopper dessert.

I was determined to crack the Bundt code, and, after several attempts, I have.

Let’s start with getting the cake out of the pan. Of course, I tried non-stick sprays, which didn’t work at all.

I tried coating the pan with butter, dusting the buttered pan with flour and dusting a shortening-coated pan with flour — all without consistent results.

At times like this, a food writer reaches out. She asks everyone she knows if they ’ve ever made a Bundt cake and, if so, if they know how to get the cake out of the pan.

One friend, who during her teen years held a summer job at a camp, recalled this simple solution used by the camp’s baker: Make a paste of shortening and flour.

This, dear readers, was the answer.

Use your fingers to carefully work the paste into every little cranny, then go back over the surface, removing any excess. It’s a miracle; invert the cooled cake and it slips out. The pan lifts up to expose every detail, exquisitely defined.

My bakes were inconsistent until I remembered Edna Lewis’s recipe for pound cake that starts in a cold oven.

The heat is increased slowly over the course of an hour’s bake — a solution that proved perfect for my cake as well.

It emerged from the pan shot through with tiny holes, all the better to soak up the glaze, but no large gaping air bubbles in the centre, and no humps, bumps or cracks.

Once I worked out the baking logistics, I became obsessed with the idea of a Meyer lemon Bundt with a thick ribbon of Meyer lemon curd: a Tunnel of Lemon, if you will.

I added lemon curd to the batter, layered the batter and lemon curd and even plopped curd on the top of the batter to see whether the custard would find its way to the centre of the cake.

Each time, the curd disappeared, absorbed into the cake, leaving no trace. A chat with an unlikely source (my manicurist) is what finally uncovered the answer: Stabilizing the curd with cream cheese made a tunnel of lemony love in the middle of this dreamy, citrusy crumb.

And so what I offer you, dear readers, is a cake that is not hard to make. A glorious Bundt can be on your cake stand with a reasonable amount of effort, whether you make your own lemon curd or not.

Bake a cake that embraces the Meyer lemon, in season for only a little while. Bring it to the office for a coffee break (remember those?), reward the kids with something bright for after-school snacking or carry it to your next gathering for a downright dazzling dessert.