Christmas Bundt Cake
Nothing celebrates the holiday season like this Christmas Bundt Cake! This easy homemade bundt cake has a simple glaze that is ideal for holding holiday sprinkles. This is an easy dessert for your kids to help with!
You know we’re crazy for bundt cakes and have them for just about any occasion. Fruit for spring, cherries for summer, pumpkin for fall…and that leaves us with a Christmas bundt cake!
Christmas Bundt Cake Recipe
If you’re looking for a fun recipe to try over the holidays, give this Christmas bundt cake a try. It’s fun, colorful, and makes a great recipes for kids to practice baking with. It’s from scratch, but very easy…and sprinkles are always a kid-pleaser!
Homemade Christmas Cake
Many times swirled cakes start with a box cake mix. This one is 100% from scratch. It has simple ingredients that you most likely already have in your cupboard. If you’ve never tried a homemade cake before, this is a great option to start with!
How do you make colored cake mix?
Coloring cake batter is easier than think. Make the cake batter, divide it into equal portions. For this recipe, we divide the batter between 3 bowls: one for red, one for green, and one to leave white. So what food coloring works best? We love Food Coloring Gel. We find it doesn’t take much to get the color we want. It’s thick and easy to work with! You can buy Americolor brand or Wilton brand. Either works well.
How do you make a swirl cake?
Swirled cakes can sometimes be tricky because you don’t want colors to blend together too much and become brown. We spoon the batter into the bundt cake pan, alternating colors. You can take a knife and make an ever so slight swirling motion if you’d like…or just leave them in the drops and have blockier color. Either way works. Just don’t swirl the batter too much.
Do you need to grease a bundt pan?
Yes, Yes, Yes! We love to use our cake release for bundt cakes. You can also grease with shortening, then dust with flour. Make sure you get all of the grooves of the cake pan. Shortening works better than butter.
How long do you let the bundt cake cool before removing it from pan?
We normally allow bundt cakes to cool no longer than 10 minutes in the pan. It can be tricky…if you leave it too long the sugar may stick to the pan, but if you take it out too soon, the cake could fall apart. 10 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for us, but each recipe might be slightly different, so follow whatever the recipe you are using says.
Bundt Cake Glaze
Glaze is always a good idea on bundt cakes. This glaze is a simple mix of butter, powdered sugar, flavoring and heavy cream. Use the heavy cream sparingly at first….just one tablespoon. Then add another if the glaze is too thick to drizzle.
The butter will cause the glaze to have a very slight yellow tone. You can use white food coloring (Yes, there is such a thing! Americolor makes a white food coloring that we love.) and add a couple of drops if you’d like a brighter white. The extract you use can also cause slight discolorations. They sell clear vanilla extract that you can use when you want a whiter glaze.
Other Christmas Cake Recipes
- Red Velvet Bundt Cake
- Red Velvet Layer Cake
- Eggnog Cream Cake
- Peppermint Cocoa Cake
- Cranberry Upside Down Cake
- Gingerbread Cake
- Candy Cane Cake
Tools To Make This Cake
- Bundt Cake Pan: This is a classic, must-have kitchen tool.
- Bundt Cake Carrier: Store your cake in this carrier to keep it fresh and easy to transport!
- Cake Plate: I have this cake plate and everyone loves it! It comes with the cute server too.
- Food Coloring: This is our favorite.
- Food Coloring: This noel mix is pretty!
Christmas Bundt Cake
Nothing celebrates the holiday season like this Christmas Bundt Cake! This easy homemade bundt cake has a simple glaze that is ideal for holding holiday sprinkles. This is an easy dessert for your kids to help with!
Servings 12
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup butter (room temperature)
- 1 ¾ cups sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 large eggs
- 1 cup milk
- Gel food coloring: green and red
For the glaze:
- 1/4 cup butter (melted)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
- 1-3 tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
Make the cake:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Combine flour, baking powder and salt in medium bowl.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add in vanilla and then eggs one at a time. Blend in milk.
- Add in the flour half at a time and mix until well blended.
- Divide batter into 3 bowls, with 1/3 of the batter going into each bowl.
- Add gel food coloring to 2 of the bowls to make green and red batter.
- Grease a bundt cake pan with shortening, then dust it with flour.
- Spoon batter into the pan my dropping spoonfuls of alternating colors of batter around the pan until all the batter has been used.
- Bake for 45-50 minutes and toothpick test comes out clean.
- Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the frosting:
- In a small bowl, mix together the melted butter, powdered sugar, flavoring and 1 tablespoon of cream. Mix until the glaze is smooth. If needed, add another tablespoon or 2 of cream until the glaze is at the consistency you'd like.
- Once the cake has cooled, drizzle or spoon the glaze overtop the cake. Immediately sprinkle with sprinkles if desired.
Notes
The calories shown are based on the cake using all of the glaze and being cut into 12 pieces, with 1 serving being 1 slice of cake. Since different brands of ingredients have different nutritional information, the calories shown are just an estimate. **We are not dietitians and recommend you seek a nutritionist for exact nutritional information.**
Nutrition
Calories: 376kcal | Carbohydrates: 58g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 14g | Saturated Fat: 8g | Cholesterol: 80mg | Sodium: 227mg | Potassium: 170mg | Sugar: 40g | Vitamin A: 475IU | Calcium: 80mg | Iron: 1.4mg