Food You Can Eat: White Soda Bundt Cake

Do NOT buy a Bundt cake pan. I don't care what Ellie says.

Don't be fooled. This way lies madness.

First things first:  Bundt cakes are bullshit.  They take way too long to bake, and they have a distinct habit of not baking evenly—which means you can bake one for over an hour and have one half of the cake perfectly baked, and the other half of the cake with a giant pocket of unbaked batter in it.  Further, depending on the cake, even if you use the toothpick test to check doneness, if the batter is like the one here, it will actually clean the toothpick as you pull it out, giving you a false sense of security that you’re not actually about to turn over a fucking mess.  So, take it from me—an actual baker—just go with a regular cake pan and leave the Bundt cakes to the old ladies and their sewing circles.

A caveat before we get started:  This recipe says not to frost the cake, and I didn’t—mostly for the sake of needing a good picture for the family cookbook.  However, I would totally frost this cake with some kind of citrus glaze if I made it again, which I won’t because Bundt cakes are bullshit.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 ½ Cups Butter, softened

3 Cups Sugar

¼ tsp. Salt

5 Eggs

2 Tbsp. Lemon Extract

3 Cups Flour, sifted

¾ Cup White Soda, such as Sprite

Cream butter with a mixer, adding the sugar in a steady stream.  Then add salt.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, then add lemon extract.

Don’t be lazy. If you just dump the sugar in there, it will not look like this.

Alternately add the white soda and sifted flour until completely mixed

I should have just stopped here and eaten the batter.

Pour batter into a well-greased bundt pan (remember to use baker’s spray which has flour in it).

I remember when I was young and naive. That was when Ellie sent me down the path of destruction.

Bake in a 325-degree oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Actually, that’s bullshit, too.  I baked the cake for just that long, did the toothpick test, thought it was done and got screwed.  This is what it looked like the first time I took it out:

Pictures don’t lie–but Bundt cakes sure as shit will.

Looks done, doesn’t it?  If you look at the 1:00 and 7:00 positions, you’ll see where I stabbed a toothpick into the cake about an inch or two from the center.  It came out clean both times because of the crust that formed on top.  Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “well, duh, that 6:00 area doesn’t look done at all.  Well, you’d be wrong.  Look at the very center of the cake.  You see where there’s a wee bit of batter showing on the opposite side?  I had the same situation with the Kentucky Butter Cake, but it turned out fine so I had no reason to worry.  But that was the side that had a gigantic pool of unbaked batter in it.

So, I put the Bundt pan over it and turned it over again, put it back in the oven and had to bake it for another 30 minutes.  By that time, one side of the cake looked completely over done while the other was just done enough not to collapse again when I turned it over.  It looked like shit.

The local PTA would be scandalized by this.

When I think back about the Kentucky Butter Cake, I remember that one side of the cake was still very moist, but another side of the cake was dry as hell—and that cake didn’t bake for nearly as long as this one did.  I’m betting my grandmother baked this a grand total of one time and never touched it again because the recipe card is in excellent shape compared to many of the others.  She should have just thrown it out and spared the world this particular atrocity.

Do not frost.  Again, this is bullshit.  Cover that sucker with a citrus glaze.  Something like this:

2 Cups Powdered Sugar, sifted

¼ – ½ cup Milk or Water

½ tsp. Lemon Extract

½ tsp. Orange Extract

Mix everything together and pour over the top of the cake once it has cooled.

Ignore everything you just read.  Do not make this cake.  Spare yourselves.

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar
About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 595 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

15 Comments

  1. Take back that Bundt pan calumny. Aside from faithfully turning out delicious cakes, albeit occasionally with some glitches, it is the ideal vessel for sculpting mousses (both sweet and savory) and really, how else would you make a Jell-O mold? There are ring pans, but why double up when your loyal friend, the Bundt pan, is always eager to serve. You can also make “pull-aparts,” which are fun.

    You can also use them to make a large ice ring (ideally with fruit added to the water that will complement the punch) that you plop into your punch bowl, if the bowl is large enough for your Bundt pan and you’re serving that many people. The secret to a good chilled punch is having the ice be as large as possible so it melts as slowly as possible. If you use those mini cubes that you get from serve yourself soda machines you’ll have an undesirably watery mess in no time. Friends of mine, bereft of a Bundt pan, will cut the top off a milk carton, fill with water and fruit about 3/4 or 4/5 full, and freeze in a stand-up position overnight. You do this because the water will expand as it freezes. Then you cut away the container and into the punch it goes.

    But thanks for the term “white soda.” I’d never heard the term before and would have assumed it meant club soda. 

  2. I just assumed the bundt cake was shaped that way due to something with volume/surface area and heat penetration  while baking.
    Is there some sort of thermomechanicbakerologyism reason for the shape, aside from annoying the author?

  3. See your problem is your grandma made the inferior soda product cake.

    Everyone knows the proper one is a Dr Pepper cake, which has the added benefit of being a single layer sheet cake so much easier than a bundt to deal with. 

Leave a Reply