Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Maple Brown Butter Glaze

Americans love pumpkins.  Pumpkin pie is a Thanksgiving staple. At Halloween, pumpkins carved into ghoulish expressions are on stoops everywhere. Canned pumpkin puree is available in the baking aisle in supermarkets all year. And there is such a thing as pumpkin spice latte. You have to love pumpkin to come up with that.

I have never been much of a pumpkin fan. We hardly ever ate pumpkin at home, so it didn't really have the chance to grow on me. They're not easy to peel and prepare. The Hindi word for pumpkin is "kaddoo". There's just no gravitas there. We had a vegetarian friend over one Thanksgiving. I agonized over the menu for a long time before deciding on a pumpkin main course. I bought more canned pumpkin than I needed and that is how I ended up with a solitary can which sat in a forgotten corner of my storage cupboard for a long, long time. 

I happen to have a beautiful Nordic Ware bundt pan which met a similar fate. It is a beautiful thing - grand in its hefty size and weight, bronze colored. It, too, sat in the cupboard for a long time. The thing is bundt cakes are meant for cakes large enough to feed a small army. I have not had the opportunity to bake for a crowd in a while. 

So when my husband recently suggested a bundt cake when I solicited his input for a baking project, I was happy to have an excuse to put the pan to use even though the combination of two work from home schedules and an enormous cake on the kitchen counter does not bode well for the waistline. A 5 star recipe for a pumpkin bundt cake on The New York Times Cooking website with 1,348 reviews was all that was needed to tip me over the edge. The recipe called for sour cream which I rarely buy, and maple syrup. I happened to have some sour cream left over from a Mexican cooking project, and a large bottle of maple syrup sitting in my fridge, waiting to be used. Serendipity in big, bold letters. 

The main challenge in baking a bundt cake is getting the whole cake out in all its glory without any splintering. I watched several YouTube videos on how to grease a bundt pan. I used a pastry brush to grease the insides of the pan with oil and then with all purpose flour. Butter is not a good idea because the milk solids in butter stick to the pan in a hot oven.  I also read that a bundt pan should be greased just before it goes into the oven rather than at the very beginning. 

With all those precautions, releasing the cake from the pan was a cakewalk (he he). For all my hesitation about pumpkin, this was a nice cake with a tender crumb. But the nicest part of the cake was the maple syrup brown butter glaze which is irresistible in the truest sense of the word. Making brown butter requires some attention. Watch it like a hawk until it turns the right shade of brown. If you take it off the heat too soon, you'll just have plain melted butter on your hands. It won't have the nutty aroma of brown butter. But if you wait too long, you'll end up with a burnt mess on your hands. Next time I might double the glaze.

Kaddoo sounds a lot more appealing to my ears than it used to. 

Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Maple Brown Butter Glaze (copied from The New York Times)

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CAKE:

3 cups/384 grams all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ¼ teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups/440 grams light brown sugar, packed

½ cup/114 grams unsalted butter, soft but cool

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 (15-ounce) can/425 grams pumpkin purée

½ cup sour cream

FOR THE GLAZE:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup/102 grams confectioners’ sugar (preferably organic), sifted

¼ cup maple syrup

 Pinch of salt

1 to 2 tablespoons lightly toasted pepitas (optional)

PREPARATION

Heat oven to 350 degrees, and butter and flour a 12-cup (or larger) capacity bundt pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice and black pepper until well combined.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine brown sugar, butter and olive oil. Beat on medium-high until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing for about 20 seconds in between each egg. Add the pumpkin purée and sour cream, and mix until well combined, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl as necessary.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and use a rubber spatula to fold in the dry ingredients until well combined. Make sure to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl to ensure an evenly mixed batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top and firmly tap the pan on the countertop a few times to release any large air bubbles. Bake the cake until golden and puffed, and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes.

Set the cake, still in its pan, on a rack to cool for 20 minutes, then use the tip of a knife to loosen the edges and invert the cake onto the rack to cool completely before glazing.

Make the glaze: Once the cake is cool, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook the butter, occasionally scraping the bottom and sides of the pan with a rubber spatula until it turns a deep golden brown and smells nutty. Don’t walk away from the pan during this process. The butter can go from brown and nutty to acrid and burnt in mere moments.

Transfer butter and all the brown bits from the pan to a heat-safe bowl, and let it cool slightly. Whisk in the confectioners’ sugar, maple syrup and salt until smooth. 

The glaze should be thick but pourable. If it’s too thin, add a bit more confectioners’ sugar. If it’s too thick, add a few drops of water.

Transfer the cake to a serving platter and pour the glaze evenly over the top. Sprinkle with pepitas if desired. Let the glaze set for a few minutes before slicing.