Bundt pan

Name Variations

 * tube pan
 * ring pan

About Bundt pan
The bundt may have originated from the German bundkuchen (often called Gugelhupf or Kugelhupf), a ring-shaped coffee cake. The word bundt appears as early as 1901 in The Settlement Cookbook, written by Lizzie Kander of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bundt is used instead of bund in a recipe for "Bundt Kuchen." The aluminum bundt pan is a variation of ceramic cake forms that were used in Germany, Austria, and Hungary to make the ring-shaped cakes and was trademarked in 1950 by H. David Dalquist, founder of Nordic Ware, based in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, who developed it at the request of members of the Hadassah Society's chapter in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The old-world pans, with fluted and grooved sides, made of delicate ceramic or cast iron, were heavy and therefore difficult to use. He modified some existing Scandinavian pan designs and fashioned the pan out of aluminum.

A heavy-walled baking pan formed with a decorative indented curvature and a hollow tube in the center. The heavier walled construction allows cake batters to rise and bake more uniformly, while the improved heat conduction and hollow center tube enable the cake to bake evenly, creating a golden crust on the outside of the cake. With the decorative shape of the pan a pleasing appearance is produced from the baked cake. This pan is generally used for baking coffee cakes and sweet cakes, known as bundt cakes. When the mixture of cake ingredients are baked, the cake is shaped into the decorative form of the pan. After the ingredients are baked, the pan is turned over so the firm cake falls out onto a plate or counter to be decorated or prepared for serving. Other similar pans for cakes are called tube pans or angel food cake pans.

The pan sold somewhat slowly until a Pillsbury-sponsored baking contest in 1966 saw a bundt cake win second place. This prompted a scramble for the pans, causing them to surpass the tin Jell-O mold to become the most-sold pan in the United States. Since introduction, more than 50 million bundt pans have been sold by the Nordic Ware company.

The women of the Hadassah Society called them "bund pans". The German word bund in bundkuchen originated either from bundling or wrapping the cake's dough around the pan's center hole or because a bund is a gathering of people. (In both German words, the final d is pronounced like a t.)

Dalquist trademarked the word bundt, and Pillsbury licensed the name in 1970 for a line of cake mixes.

In early 2007, some of the original bundt pans were taken into the Smithsonian Institution's collection.

National Bundt Pan day is November 15.



Useful For

 * Bundt cake
 * Chiffon cake
 * Angel food cake