Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

by Sabrina Snyder

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Brown Sugar Bundt Cake is a sticky, vanilla iced cake filled with the rich flavor of brown sugar, sour cream and pecans. One bite will have you hooked!

Who doesn’t like rich, sweet cakes that you can eat for breakfast or dessert like our Honey Bun Cake? Enjoy this cake with a cup of coffee or try one of our other Baked Goods Recipes for a treat you can eat all day long.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake

BROWN SUGAR BUNDT CAKE

Brown sugar can change the simplest recipes into something decadent. With the rich molasses flavor giving baked goods a smokey, caramel flavor and a denser texture, it’s one of the best ingredients to enjoy during the colder months. This past fall we made a delicious Brown Sugar Pecan Pound Cake and ever since I’ve been looking for a way to top that melt in your mouth flavor.

This Brown Sugar Bundt Cake is dangerously delicious and addicting! Every bite has that slightly caramel flavor from the sugar plus a respectable amount of butter and eggs that would make it welcome in any Southern kitchen. 

A bit on the sweet, dense side, this Bundt Cake is perfect for an indulgent breakfast or dessert. Serve a slice with some marmalade (or more butter) and a hot cup of coffee for a winter morning treat. Drizzle with Salted Caramel Sauce or check out other ways to frost or top your cake below.

Normally I make my cakes in round cake tins. Since this cake is more like pound cake in density and batter it does really well in a bundt pan. Plus, bundt pans are normally decorative (there are some really fancy ones out there!) so no need to frost. A simple glaze looks amazing, but to be honest this cake doesn’t even need that.

Advice for making a bundt cake:

Grease the pan well and make sure the cake is fully baked. You don’t want half the cake stick to the pan or be raw in the middle, collapsing the cake. I use baking spray which is a mixture of non-stick spray and flour. Insert a knife into the center of the cake, not near the edge. If it pulls out clean, then the cake is done.

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HOW TO MAKE A BROWN SUGAR BUNDT CAKE

  • Cream the butter and sugar: This adds air to your batter to give the cake extra rise.
  • Sift your dry ingredients: This keeps the cake lighter and easier to mix.
  • Pecans: Add in the pecans and vinegar (this plus the sour cream gives the cake a nice tangy flavor).
  • Bake at low temperature: Because of the size of this cake you want to bake at 325 degrees or the outside will burn before the inside cooks.
  • Cool Completely: You need to cool completely before icing.
  • Icing: Depending on your tastes you can go as thick or thin with the icing as you’d like. We like it to drip all the way down the cake but less milk will give you more of a Starbucks loaf cake consistency.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Vanilla Glaze

VARIATIONS ON BROWN SUGAR BUNDT CAKE

  • Nuts: Mix chopped pecans or walnuts into your batter to give this more fall flavor and bit of crunch. 
  • Cinnamon: Make a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Cake by adding some cinnamon brown sugar swirls to the batter. Pour the batter into your bundt pan. Mix ¼ cup butter, ½ cup brown sugar, ⅓ cup flour, and 1 teaspoon together. Spoon mixture into top of batter and swirl with a knife. Bake as usual.
  • Sundae: Top your Brown Sugar Cake with a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream and Hot Fudge for a delicious sundae. Sprinkle with some chopped nuts.
  • Frosting: A slightly savory frosting like Cream Cheese Frosting would balance out the sweetness. Add a little nutmeg to give it some more warmth.
  • Streusel: Turn this into a more traditional coffee cake by adding a brown sugar streusel topping with butter, brown sugar, and flour (recipe below). Sprinkle in the bottom of the pan before you pour in batter.
  • Muffins: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin tin. Prepare batter as usual. Pour into muffin cups and top with a brown sugar streusel topping. Bake for 20-22 minutes.

Brown Sugar Streusel Topping

Mix the following ingredients together until a crumbly mixture. Can be made ahead up to a day in advance and store in fridge.

  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Why is it called a bundt cake?

Bundt cake showed up in cookbooks as early a 1901 and is thought to come from the German bundkuchen, also known as the Gugelhupf. The Bundkuchen is a donut shaped cake but there isn’t a traditional recipe that goes with it. It is more referring to the shape. The most standard pans have a slight ridge design around the sides but there are some really elaborate designs out there.

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HOW TO STORE BROWN SUGAR BUNDT CAKE

  • Serve: This cake has dairy in it so it should be stored after 2 hours at room temperature.
  • Store: Keep your cake fresh sealed in an airtight container for up 1 week in the fridge. Allow to cool completely so no moisture collects.
  • Freeze: Cool your cake and freeze for up to 3 months, sealed tightly with plastic wrap.

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Dinner, then Dessert

Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

Brown Sugar Bundt Cake is a sticky, vanilla iced cake filled with the rich flavor of brown sugar, sour cream and pecans. One bite will have you hooked!
Yield 12 servings
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 50 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder
Brown Sugar Pound Cake
PrintRate

Ingredients
 

For the Cake:

  • 3/4  cup  unsalted butter , softened
  • 1  cup  brown sugar , packed
  • 1/2  cup  sugar
  • 1/4 cup  sour cream
  • 2  teaspoons  vanilla extract
  • 3  large eggs
  • 1 1/2  cups  flour
  • 1/2  teaspoon  salt
  • 1/2  teaspoon  baking soda
  • 1  teaspoon  white vinegar
  • 1 cup pecans , finely chopped

For the Glaze:

  • 2 tablespoons whole milk
  • 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease a 12 cup bundt cake pan with baking spray.
  • In your stand mixer cream the butter, brown sugar and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
  • Add sour cream, vanilla extract and eggs (add the eggs one at a time) until well mixed.
  • Sift the flour, baking soda and salt then add it into the stand mixer until just combined on low speed.
  • Add in the vinegar and the chopped pecans until just combined.
  • Pour into bundt pan and bake 1 hour and 30 minutes.
  • Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan, then let cool completely before icing.
  • To ice, mix the powdered sugar with the milk until you have a thick but pourable consistency, adding up to an additional tablespoon of milk if needed.
  • Pour the glaze over the cake.

Nutrition

Calories: 518kcal | Carbohydrates: 78g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 21g | Saturated Fat: 10g | Cholesterol: 78mg | Sodium: 272mg | Potassium: 127mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 54g | Vitamin A: 497IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 50mg | Iron: 2mg
Keyword: Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

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Brown Sugar Bundt Cake collage

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the upcoming cookbook: Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients which is being published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. Only baked 1 hr. Didn’t dare go any longer. Haven’t tried the cake yet as it is still cooling. Very skeptical. Didn’t rise very much and very dark. Hopefully looks are deceiving.

    Reply

    1. Depending on the size of your mini loaf pans, I would recommend baking them at 350 degrees f for about 35-45 minutes. Insert a toothpick near the center and when it comes out clean, they’re done. Hope this helps!

      Reply

  3. This was such a perfectly moist and easy cake to bake! My whole family enjoyed it; saving to make it again this weekend!

    Reply