Cardamom Cream Bundt Cake

Did you know that you don’t necessarily need butter to bake a cake? It’s true. The function of the butter (the fat) in the recipe can be substituted with several other ingredients.

Carrot cakes are usually made without butter, using some kind of oil (vegetable, olive, canola) as the fat. Jewish Honey Cake of course goes without butter, using honey or a combination of honey with oil as the substitute. I’ve also seen paleo cake recipes that make up for it with a combination of eggs, almond flour and tapioca.

Today’s recipe was the first time I’d ever seen or heard of heavy whipping cream being the entire substitution for butter in a cake recipe. I was curious to see how it would turn out, both because of the ingredient swap and the changes it would make to the methodology of putting the cake together. Because there’s no butter, there obviously wasn’t going to be a creaming step (where the butter and sugar is beaten together until fluffy).

However, one major plus side of the no-creaming method is that the cake then becomes one of those rare gems that don’t necessarily require a handheld or standing mixer to make. If you’ve got two hands, you can put it together very easily. The dry ingredients are combined first, then five eggs (yes, five) are added into the dry ingredients. This seemed weird to me too, as the cake batter at that stage resembled clumpy breadcrumbs. But it’s fine: keep going.

An important note: if you’re using a 10 cup Bundt pan, I do not recommend pouring in all of the batter–it’s a bit too much batter for the pan. Plus, with five eggs in a batter there’s definitely going to be some rise to the finished cake. I filled my pan up about 3/4 of the way, then divided the rest of the batter into muffin cups and made them into cupcakes. If you have a 16 cup Bundt pan, then you should be able to bake it all into one cake, no problem. But if not–don’t risk it. The last thing you want is a mess of spilled cake in your oven. I know from past personal experience that it is the WORST to try and clean up.

I was very pleased with this cake. Cardamom is one of my favorite spices because it can go both ways; sweet and savory. In this case, it gives the cake a sweet yet zesty kick that pairs well with the vanilla. The cake’s texture was one that I wasn’t used to; the heavy cream gives it a ribbon-y appearance that may make you worry that’s it’s not ‘done’ in certain areas, but don’t worry. So long as you got it up the correct temperature, (195-200F) I promise you that it is. The heavy cream substitution creates a very dense, moist texture. It was different, but I still really liked it and I think that you will too.

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Linking this up to Fiesta Friday #273, co-hosted this week by Mollie @ The Frugal Hausfrau and Angie@Fiesta Friday.