A BUNDT TRIPLE

The dense, moderately sweet cake lends itself to fruit, chocolate and booze treatments

My first Bundt pan was purchased with my mother’s Green Stamp books. For younger readers, I’ll explain. Decades ago, folks were given gummy sheets of bright green stamps as a bonus for purchases; pasted into specified books, they could be redeemed for everything from card tables to lawn chairs to kitchen appliances.

At 15, I thought my Bundt pan was a treasure, its ring shape and fluted sides turning out cakes that I deemed glamorous. A couple of years later, the pans became a home-baking phenomenon after a rich Tunnel of Fudge Cake baked in a Bundt placed second in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off.

My early Bundt experiments taught me to only use recipes developed specifically for Bundt pan use. Generally, Bundt cakes are denser, more like pound cake than a tender-crumbed layer cake, treats that aren’t overly sweet and need to be accompanied with something slightly sugary and creamy such as sweetened whipped cream (or served solo as a breakfast treat with coffee). I learned to use a skewer to test for doneness, finding that a toothpick wasn’t long enough to reach the done-now spot. And I learned that in most cases, a simple dusting of powdered sugar on a cooled Bundt cake was all that was needed to add panache.

H. David Dalquist, the owner of Minnesota’s Nordic Ware company, invented the Bundt pan in 1950. He developed it for the Minneapolisbased Hadassah Society (a group for Jewish women) who wanted to re-create traditional kugelhopf, a dense, ring-shaped cake with European roots. Now, loads of very fancy Bundt pans are available in the marketplace. Decorative, yet practical.