Hummingbird Bundt Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is my hummingbird cake dense? ›

Cold eggs result in a dry, denser cake. Quickly bring eggs to room temperature: To quickly bring eggs to room temperature, fill a bowl with warm water (not hot) and add eggs and let sit 10-20 minutes.

Your hummingbird cake can be dry due to common mistakes, such as draining your crushed pineapples. Don't drain your crushed pineapple before adding it to the recipe; make sure you're using it along with its juice, which imparts not only tons of flavor, but exquisite moistness, too.

Traditional Bundt cake pans hold 12-cups of batter, which is the perfect two-cake cake mix size. Most recipes that make 10 to 12 cups of batter will fit perfectly in most bundt cake pans.

The best way to ensure your cake comes out of the pan cleanly is to grease it well from the start. Catherine and our Test Kitchen staff always use shortening to grease Bundt pans—yes, even ones with nonstick coating. To grease a Bundt pan, take a dollop of shortening on a paper towel and wipe the interior of the pan.

There's a big chance your butter and sugar will over-cream, meaning the butter will trap more air than it should. As the batter bakes, that extra air will deflate and leave you with an overly dense cake. It's all science! For best results, cream butter and sugar together for about 1-2 minutes.

Add structure.

But if you add ¼ cup flour or half a box of instant pudding mix, the texture of the cake becomes denser and tighter, ideal for a pound-cake-like consistency that will hold the shape of a Bundt pan. When possible I toss something into the bottom of the pan, like nuts or coconut, before adding the batter.

A dry cake is usually the result of one of the following pitfalls: using the wrong ingredients, making mistakes while measuring or mixing the batter, or baking the cake too long or at too high a temperature. Once you understand which common cake-baking blunders to avoid, you'll know how to bake a moist cake every time.

Extra sugar or leavening will cause a cake to fall; too much flour makes it dry.

To avoid add-ins sinking to the bottom of the cake, choose a cake that starts with thick batter. Stir add-ins into the thick batter before scooping it into the pan. Make sure your pan is large enough to accommodate add-ins.

Is there a difference between a Bundt cake mix and a regular cake mix? ›

The differences between a Bundt cake and a regular cake are shape, size, and texture. The ingredients may be the same, but the end result looks different. A regular cake can be round, square, rectangular or any shape really.

Once you've cooked your bundt cake and removed it from the oven, allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then place a wire cooling rack over the base of the cake and invert the pan to release.

A slippery side can prevent a strong rise. Follow this tip: Before you fill the pan with batter, coat it in butter, then add flour. Tip and shake the pan until the butter is coated in the flour. Discard any excess flour and then pour in the batter.

After removing from the oven, place the pan on a wire rack and let cool; your recipe will specify the required time, usually from 10-20 minutes. This allows the cake to become firm enough to remove from the pan without breaking apart. Cooling too long in the pan will cause the cake to be damp and stick to the pan.

Rebel bakers who flout the rules should know that using Pam on nonstick bundt pans without ruining them is all about the cleanup. First, after you've sprayed your pan with Pam and poured in your cake batter, take the time to carefully wipe off every bit of the excess Pam on the edges of the bundt pan.

DENSE RESULT

This can be caused by not using the right egg replacer. Over mixing batter is another reason which causes over development of the gluten and a dense result. If your oven isn't heated to the correct temperature before you put your cake in, it can cause it to not bake properly.

Wedding cakes are denser than traditional layer cakes; they need to stand up to the abuse of being stacked and moved around. You'll need to learn about how to pin a wedding cake together to prevent collapse and slippage.