Citrus Champagne Bundt Cake

Cheers to the little things – like the fact that it’s the weekend and there’s cake in the world! # 199: Citrus Champagne Bundt Cake

* Cue the bundt cake scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding * If you haven’t seen it, then hop to! You’re missing out.

Isn’t she gorgeous? So many swirls for showing off fancy icings! Secret to professional-looking cakes: treat yo self to an intricate bundt pan. I got this one as a birthday present and I’m trying really hard to not make a new cake every other day.

Did you know that the bundt pan is an American invention from 1950? I always thought of Nordic Ware as the gold-standard for bundt pans, but I had no idea they were the first company to produce them! The owner, H. David Dalquist made the first bundt pan for a society of Jewish women in Minneapolis who wanted to recreate a kugelhopf.

Of course, this sent me down a rabbit hole – if the kugelhopf cake is hundreds of years old and the bundt cake pan is a mere 70 years old, what were they baked in before? Well it turns out ring-shaped cake pans did exist before 1950, but they weren’t multiuse workhorses like today’s bundt pan. They were made for specific types of cakes, like kugelhopf. What Dalquist did was the give the pan a name and a life of it’s own!

I already had some sparkling rosé open, so I decided to keep with the pink theme and use ruby grapefruit along with the orange. Gotta love ingredient color coordination.

How is it that an entire orange translates to less than a tablespoon of zest? Safe to say I got a good arm workout getting to three full tablespoons.

Another huge plus of a bundt cake: it can be made in one bowl! I still use every ramekin I own whenever I bake (sorry Nate), but you could definitely just dump and mix this batter and it would turn out beautifully.

* Side note: the recipe says to blend the sugar with the zest in a food processor before adding it in. I skipped that step! Having visible flecks of zest in the batter is actually lovely in my opinion. Also, nobody wants to have to wash a food processor after a 3-second use. *

You best believe I buttered this pan within an inch of it’s life. Hot tip: keep the butter wrappers and use them to butter the insides of pans! They’re wax paper and always have a little butter left on them if you let the cube soften on the counter.

Didn’t realize I was holding my breath til the cake finally slid out of the pan. I then proceeded to do a happy dance around the room with my oven mitts and still-hot pan in hand. Priorities.