Marble Bundt Cake – Babovka

Everyone loves a Bundt Cake, that familiar round cake with the hole in the middle. … and we all have our favorite flavors and memories associated with it. This Marble Bundt Cake is a popular Czech Coffeecake – Cake having with an afternoon cup of coffee or tea on the weekends. It is effortless to make even a Glute-Free version, which can be tricky. This Bundt Cake is not dry and crumbly like other Gluten-Free cakes whatsoever.

History of a Bundt Cake in USA

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the Bundt Cake is “The Icon Cake of 60’s Comfort Food”, and that this Bundt Cake Pan is treasured in the Museum of Natural History.

Bundt Cake Pans are actually an Americanized version of a German Gugelhopf Cake. That’s right, the History of the Bundt cake is tied up in need for German immigrants to have a KaffeeKlatsch like those they had at home.

What is Gugelhupf cake?

Gugelhupf cake was traditionally served with coffee at breakfast or an afternoon tea and was often called the poor man’s cake. It is a yeast-based cake (often with raisins), traditionally baked in a distinctive circular Bundt mold. It is popular in a wide region of Central Europe, the reason why Czech people love this cake as well.

This cake is also related to the Christmas cake in Italy known as the Pandoro and to the American bundt cake.

Where did Bundt Cake mold come from?

Dalquist was the owner of Minnesota’s Nordic Ware company, and he cast the pan for the Minneapolis-based Hadassah Society (a group for Jewish women).

The American cakes in the sixties were too light and fluffy, and the ladies missed the rich cakes of their childhood while growing up in Germany. Sadly, the recipes from home didn’t work with a standard cake pan… the batter was all wrong for the shape. And the cakes wouldn’t bake through. A pan with a hole in the center would allow the heat from the oven to reach the batter in the center of the cake… baking it evenly.

David Dalquist headed down to his basement workshop and reproduced the Bundt pan out of Cast Aluminum. He added a few extra folds to the pan’s shape to give it flair.

• 

• 

What is Bundt Cake in Czech?

There are tens of different recipes for Bundt Cake out there.  They are all called “Babovka,” and to know what type of Babovka you are about to eat, we add a second name. Most of the time, the second name is the flavor of the cake.

What is the most traditional “Bábovka” in Czech?

It is an old-fashioned Czech Marble Bundt Cake. It is effortless and easy to make. You do not need difficult steps to bake this dessert.

Marble Bundt Cake is made with a layer of vanilla cake and a layer of chocolate cake. After done baking and cooled down, decorate the bundt cake with a little icing sugar. You are ready to serve.

Bábovka is most often prepared as a sweet dough, but depending on the region of Central Europe, it can take the form of leavened dough, with raisins soaked in rum. There is also a savory version, with bacon and walnuts.

Let’s get baking!

Ever since we became a Gluten-Free household, I had a hard time creating this simple recipe. It just never came out fluffy and light.

I started to search for different ways of prepping the batter. I found one where you don’t have to spend ages foaming butter sugar together. Instead, you bang it all in a pot, mix it up and stick it in the oven. You can modify the recipe to suit your taste in any way you want. Add nuts; you can leave the batter plain and not add any cocoa – entirely up to you.

How to grease your pan

This is the most important step of making a bundt cake. You must get this right as the last thing you want is to spend all this time making your dessert and having your delicious treat stuck to a mold.

Grease with butter. This is my preferred method, and I demonstrate exactly how I prep my pans in the video above. Thoroughly coat the entire inside of the pan with a thin but even layer of butter. It does help to have butter at room temperature.

• 

• 

How to make the base

As I already said, this is super easy to make a cake. Take a saucepan, and on medium heat, stir together unsalted butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and cream. I usually cook with half & half, but heavy cream helps this cake not to be dry and crumbly in this recipe. Even second day, this Marble Bundt Cake stays moist and delicious.

Mix well together and turn off the heat. Set aside to cool down before adding egg yolks.

• 1/2 cup of Heavy Cream
• 1 Tbsp of vanilla extract
• 2 sticks of unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups of powder sugar

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Separate egg yolks and whisk egg whites in a stand mixer. Whipped egg whites to achieve stiff peaks. That will help your cake to be light at the end.

• 4 egg whites

• 

• 

Grab a cooled down butter base and slowly add one egg yolk at a time while whisking them in. Also, add Gluten-Free flour. Do not dump flour all at once. Add flour in smaller amounts to make it easy to stir. Lastly, add baking powder, which you can have mixed in flour already. Stir everything till you have no lumps.

After trying all kinds of Gluten-Free flours, I settled on Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour. I use this flour for all my baking and cooking.

• 4 egg yolks
• 2 cups of Gluten-free flour
• 2 tsp of baking powder

• 

• 

• 

• 

When to add Cocoa powder?

You have two options here. If you like chocolate cake, you can add cocoa powder before adding egg whites. Just whisk the cocoa powder into your cake batter.

Below is how your Bundt Cake will look like when you add all cocoa powder and make a chocolate Bundt Cake.

• 2 Tbsp of cocoa powder

• 

• 

• 

• 

Lastly, gently fold egg whites into your batter. Try not to break air bubbles. Egg whites help this cake to stay light and airy.

• 

• 

How to make a Marble effect

Pour batter into a greased Bundt Cake mold. Reserve about 1 cup of vanilla batter and stir in cocoa powder. Spoon the chocolate part of the batter over the vanilla part of a cake and, with a knife or toothpick, make swirls and mix those two colors gently together. Do not mix too much. Otherwise, you will lose the vanilla color part.

Bake in pre-heated oven for 35 minutes at 350F.

Rule of thumb

Keep an eye on your oven and bundt cake!!!! Every oven bakes a different way. Your oven could bake it faster or slower. It also depends on what pan you are using. Some silicon molds bake slower than aluminum or cast iron.

• 

• 

• 

• 

How to unmold Bundt Cake

The unmolding can be a delicate task. Many of my bundt cakes broke as I tried to unmold them. Sometimes they still do, but that does not change the flavor. You can imagine the tears in my eyes as I desperately looked at half of my smashed cake hanging from the bottom of the mold.

I have found the greatest technique. As the cake is out of the oven, it must first be cool down to touch on a cooling rack. Then, place a plate above the mold, and turn the cake upside down. So far, my cakes magically, unmold perfectly.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Cooking tips

• When you are serving Marble Bundt Cake, it tastes delicious while sipping tea or coffee with it.
• Try to add this Bundt Cake to a bowl of Ice cream and drizzle it with chocolate.
• This cake stores at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 5 days. I don’t recommend refrigerating, as the fridge will dry it out. You may also freeze; wrap well (I usually double wrap, first with plastic wrap and then with foil) for up to two months. I love to store my cake on my Ikea glass plate with a dome.

I hope you did enjoy this Gluten-Free recipe. If you try this recipe, let me know! Leave a comment, please. Thank you so much!

Other dessert bar recipes to try

If you like these Strawberry Crumb Bars, be sure to try these other dessert bar recipes.

• Lemon Bars, which were the inspiration for the Strawberry Crumb Bars. They truly started the Fruit bars taste!
• Orange bars, very similar to Lemon bars.
• Apple Bundt Cake – “Majka” – Very flavorful bundt cake. Apples make this cake very moist, unlike being dry and crumbly like many Gluten-Free desserts are.

Until next time…!

DOBROU CHUT!

© FROMCZECHTOUSA. All images & content are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please link back to this post for the recipe.