Carrot Cake and Cream Cheese Bundt with Lemon drizzle icing

This Cream Cheese Carrot Bundt Cake designed by Donna Hay, is filled with an irresistible cream cheese frosting, the same frosting which is generally reserved for icing the cake with and which everyone loves. Instead, we have baked it in the middle of the cake, where it transforms into the dreamiest, lemony cheesecake filling. Combined with sweet, grated carrot and chopped pecans or walnuts, and generously spiced with ground cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, this cake will also make a delicious dessert. 

Lemon Sour Cream Bundt Cake

  

My Lemon Sour Cream Bundt Cake is tangy with lemon flavours, and has a firmer texture to it, which is essential for a Bundt cake. Pouring lemon juice over the cake when hot from the oven is the final touch to ensuring very citrussy flavours, which we all love. I removed the warm cake from the tin without any problems, and let's be honest this is every cake makers concern, that it will be difficult to remove their baked cake from the Bundt tin. No worries with this recipe though, it's the perfect no fuss dough consistency for Bundt cake cooking. If however the cake didn't come out of the tin well, and ended up in pieces, heaven forbid, just turn it into a delicious trifle. I promise this won't happen though if you prepare your tin properly. Preparing the cake tin meticulously for a Bundt cake is essential to ensuring it removes cleanly from the tin. More of that later.

As I write this, we are in the middle of quite the rain event here in North Queensland, which isn't conducive to perfecting the icing on the cake. 350 millimetres was forecast, so far we've only had close to 120 mm over a few days, but it's raining again today so there's lots of humidity and moisture in the air even when it's not raining. The cake was all I wanted it to be, and it rose perfectly, but the icing needed to be a lot thicker as the extreme humidity and moisture in the air meant that after a while it just soaked into the cake. I wanted the icing to dribble delicately down the sides of the cake to accentuate the bundt shape which it did, however I resisted adding more and more icing sugar as I thought it might be too sweet. So photogenically it's not brilliant, but taste wise it is. That's what really counts isn't it? I also didn't have a lot of time to play with it, as my wonderful friend Julie was visiting for the day, up from NSW, Mr. HRK aka barista, already had the coffee machine on, so the cake was begging to be eaten. That's real life in my kitchen.

The other option is to serve it sprinkled with icing sugar which is also very effective for this kind of cake, however the icing sugar would have just soaked into the cake in this humidity. If I was working in a perfect world and a  professional kitchen and not working as a home cook and blogger, the air-conditioners would be turned on eliminating the humidity problem completely, however it's not a perfect world here in North Queensland, pretty darned close though.

Still tastes great

Bundt cakes have a firmer consistency than a lot of cakes and so they release from the tin very easily. They are called Bundt cakes because they are baked in a fluted style of tin with a hole in the middle which originated in America, however the denser type of cake mixture has more European roots from countries such as Germany. My tin isn't as fluted as some of the ones out there so the Bundt shape isn't as obvious. By any standards though it is a delicious cake and takes 1 3/4 hours to bake in the oven because I chose to make a high cake. 

The trick is to prepare the Bundt tin properly to ensure the cake just falls out easily when required. I coated the tin with butter, or oil would be ok as well, every nook and crevice needs to be coated, lined the base with a circle of baking parchment carefully cutting a hole in the middle to fit, and then sifted flour over the buttered surface, before shaking off the excess. Easy peasy. However if you are a bit nervous about using a Bundt tin, and there's no need to be with this recipe my friends, I've also baked this cake using a 23 cm round springform cake tin, and it turned out perfectly. 

Equipment: a 23 cm Bundt Tin, or a 22-23 cm springform tin

Serves 8-10

Preheat your oven to moderately slow (160 deg. C-170 deg. C)

Ingredients:

250 g butter at room temperature

2 1/2 cups castor sugar

2 cups plain flour

1/4 cup Self Raising flour (if you make your own SR flour, this is 1/4 cup plain flour + 1/2 teaspoon baking powder)

3/4 cup sour cream

2 teaspoons grated lemon rind

6 eggs at room temperature

1/2 cup lemon juice

icing sugar

Method:

Cream butter, lemon rind and sugar until light and fluffy. 

Beat in eggs one at a time.

Stir in sifted dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream.

Spread mixture into greased deep 23 cm round cake tin or well greased Bundt cake tin which has a base lined with baking paper.

Bake in a moderately slow oven (160 deg. C-170 deg. C) for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours, depending on your oven.

Take from oven, turn out of tin, by tipping upside down using a dinner plate on the top of the tin, so that patterned surface is now on the top, and rest on a cooling rack. Pour 1/2 cup lemon juice over the top. Then sprinkle over the top with finely sifted icing sugar or ice with lemon icing.

Lemon Icing on the cake

1 1/2 cups (225g) icing sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon melted butter

Method:  

Sift the icing sugar, add the melted butter, then add the lemon juice gradually, in a small bowl until you have a soft, drizzling consistency, then drizzle over the cake.

N.B.  If you are baking in hot, rainy or humid conditions like I was when making this, you will  need to add more icing sugar until it sets well, or the icing will just run off the cake and absorb into the cake. When the icing is set on the cake, decorate with some bling, edible flowers or whatever you have on hand, and depending on the occasion.

As I set to publish this post, hallelujah, the sun is shining today for us for the first time all week, which is wonderful. However I really feel for all the folk in Southern Queensland and further inland who are still copping bucket loads of rain, after only just recovering from the last deluge. It's either too much, or too little. The weather really has just gone crazy.

Warm wishes,

Pauline

Lemon and Ricotta Mini-Bundt Cakes

These cakes are a celebration of citrus fruits in season, a tangy theme running through my sweets baking this Winter. 

Fill these little lovelies with lemon or lime curd, dust with some sifted icing sugar, garnish with a slice of dehydrated cumquat, (optional of course) and sit back and enjoy with fresh cream or yoghurt, depending on the time of day. Lemons and limes have been abundant this Winter, and quite interchangeable when cooking sweets.

Lemon Sour Cream Cake

Go straight to the recipe at:

This recipe was included in a school recipe book published as a fundraiser at my children's high school in 1994. Some of the best recipes can be found in these compilations of old family favourites. So does this mean it is a vintage recipe? I'll leave you to be the judge.  When I tasted it again last week after many years, at Mahjong at my friend Lou's house, I knew it was a winner and had to bake it. It is a large cake, with a beautiful texture and the lemon and sour cream combine to take the taste sensation to another level. Absolutely delicious. It works best in a bundt tin or just one of those tins which creates a hole in the middle of the cake, so that the lemon juice absorbs more efficiently over the surface of the cake instead of soaking into the middle. However a normal large springform tin would work just as well. It also freezes well if cut into individual slices and individually wrapped. A good cake to make whilst lemons are in season.

INGREDIENTS:

250g butter
2 1/2 cups castor sugar
1/4 cup self raising flour
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
6 eggs
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

LET'S COOK:

1. Cream butter, lemon rind and sugar until light and fluffy. This may take a while.
2. Beat in eggs one at a time
3. Stir in sifted dry ingredients alternately with sour cream. Spread mixture into greased deep 23cm round cake tin or well greased bundt tin, and line the base with greased baking paper.
4. Bake in a moderately slow oven (160 deg C-170 deg C) for 1 1/2 hours to 1 3/4 hours.
5. Remove from the oven, turn out of tin onto a cake plate, and then pour 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice over the top. Sprinkle with icing sugar just before serving.
6. Instead of sifting icing sugar over the top, you could also drizzle lemon icing over the top for more decoration.
7. Serve with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt on the side.

Dear Reader, Do you still cook some family favourites from old school , CWA and church recipe books? Do you think they can now be called vintage recipes but offer themselves to be revamped for a more 21st century presentation?

Enjoy!

Thanks for dropping by,

Pauline