Gingerbread bundt cake is a terrific recipe to use when you want a cake that’s simple to make, fancy to look at and really tasty to eat. The design of the bundt pan makes the cake look a lot more difficult to make than it is, so you can impress your friends and family. Artistic baking aside, the cake’s texture is just the right combination of light and airy with rich and moist.
You can serve this plain, glazed or simply dusted with powdered sugar, and you can make this recipe for gingerbread bundt cake ahead of time, if you have a busy week coming up.
Gingerbread Bundt Cake Ingredients
- Unsalted butter: Butter adds moisture and blends with the sugar to make the batter airy. Use unsalted butter to avoid having too much of a salty taste to the cake, because you’ll add kosher salt later on.
- Cream cheese: Cream cheese increases the richness of the cake batter. While you want an airy cake, you also want something that isn’t dry and that has a smooth mouthfeel, and cream cheese helps achieve that.
- Light brown sugar: Using light brown sugar specifically (as opposed to dark brown sugar) adds that deeper flavor and some moisture. You’ll be adding molasses as well, so using light brown sugar gives you better control over just how much moisture and molasses flavor ends up in the cake.
- Eggs: Eggs bind the ingredients together and help make the batter more stable.
- Vanilla extract: This adds flavor and blends nicely with the molasses and ginger flavors.
- Molasses: Molasses is a wonderful partner for ginger in baked goods. This adds a richer color and flavor, along with moisture and sweetness.
- All-purpose flour: You don’t need cake flour for this recipe; whatever all-purpose brand is in your pantry will work.
- Ground ginger: Using ground ginger spice helps the ginger flavor spread evenly throughout the batter.
- Cinnamon: Cinnamon is another complementary flavor for ginger and molasses.
- Baking powder: Baking powder acts as a rising agent so the cake doesn’t end up too dense.
- Kosher salt: Using kosher salt specifically helps preserve the flavor of the cake (additives in table salt can sometimes affect the taste). Kosher salt crystals are also larger and take longer to dissolve in cake batter, helping to distribute the taste of the salt.
- Nutmeg: This helps flavor the batter.
- Baking soda: This combines with the mildly acidic cream cheese to help raise the cake batter without interfering with the baking powder. Without the soda, the acidic cream cheese and acidic cream of tartar in the baking powder would be too much for the baking soda within the baking powder. Adding more soda helps balance that out.
- Milk: The 2% milk is one of the main sources of moisture for the cake batter.
Directions
Step 1: Prep the pan
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch fluted tube pan or bundt pan.
Step 2: Start the batter
In a large bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy, five to seven minutes. Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Next, beat in the vanilla and molasses.
Step 3: Add in the dry ingredients
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and baking soda. Add the dry mixture to the creamed mixture in stages, alternating it with the milk, beating well after each addition.
Step 4: Bake the cake
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cake for 45 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes before taking it out of the pan and letting it cool completely on a wire rack.
Gingerbread Bundt Cake Variations
- Make a glaze: You can serve the cake as is, or add a tasty maple glaze once it’s cooled down. The glaze will harden quickly. If maple isn’t your thing, you can try making the vanilla, chocolate or lemon glazes from this vanilla-glazed doughnuts recipe.
- Add chopped candied ginger: Get your favorite candied or crystallized ginger and dice it into tiny pieces. Coat the pieces with a little flour (not too much, just enough to stop them from sticking together) and mix them in with the batter.
How to Store Gingerbread Bundt Cake
Put the cake in an airtight container or cake dome (this is a domed container that’s tall enough to store bundt and layered cakes), and store the cake at room temperature for up to three days. If you have leftover cake after that, slice it into pieces and wrap each in plastic wrap and then foil. Freeze the slices in a freezer-safe container or bag for up to six months.
Can you freeze a whole gingerbread bundt cake?
Yes, you can actually bake the cake ahead of time and freeze the entire thing. First, the cake has to cool completely, and second, you can’t glaze it or cover it with frosting or powdered sugar. That can wait until after the cake has thawed and you’re about ready to serve it. Wrap the entire cake in plastic wrap, and then wrap it in foil, just as you would with cake slices. Technically, you can place the wrapped cake directly in the freezer, but placing it in a freezer-safe container after wrapping can help protect its shape.
Gingerbread Bundt Cake Tips
What’s the best way to grease and flour a bundt pan?
Greasing and flouring a bundt pan is not the same as quickly greasing a casserole dish. Don’t use butter, because that can actually increase the stickiness of the cake’s surface. Use either shortening or a cooking spray made specifically for baked goods. Once the pan is greased, take a spoonful of flour and tap it all around the pan’s surface. Tilt the pan to get at the sides if you have to. Tap in (literally tap the spoon, or your hand holding the spoon, to make the flour fall off in small amounts) more than you think you need. When everything is covered, tilt the pan and start tapping the side of it while rotating it to spread the excess flour around, then tip the pan over a trash can or bowl to let the remaining excess flour fall out. Find more bundt cake tips here for the best results.
Can you bake this in a large cake pan?
You’ve got a couple of considerations if you don’t have a bundt or tube pan and only have a regular, flat cake pan. One is volume. A 10-inch bundt cake does not convert directly to a 10-inch cake pan because the bundt pan is so much taller; you’ve got way more batter to deal with. You need to know the volume of the pans, most often measured in cups. If your bundt pan holds 12 cups, you may need two cake pans that hold six cups each. Or, you could use a 13×9-inch cake pan for all the batter.
The other issue is baking time. A smaller, flatter cake will cook through in less time, while a larger, flatter cake may need the same amount of time or more. Don’t change the baking temperature.
How do you turn this gingerbread bundt cake recipe into cupcakes?
Using the same baking temperature and batter recipe, bake one cupcake. Use a liner and fill it halfway, then start baking, checking after 10 to 15 minutes. It could take as long as 20 minutes to bake the cupcake to the point where a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Once you have your baking time, you can fill the entire cupcake pan and start baking. You can also check out this recipe specifically for gingerbread cupcakes.
