How to Make Cinnamon Mini Bundt Cakes

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Any recipe that makes 2 servings but uses 20 bowls is very much a recipe for me. Terrible I know. Most people are out there making one bowl wedding cakes and here I am making 20 bowl mini bundt cakes for two.

This is 100% an on going theme in my life. When I was a student at Le Cordon Bleu I’d always be the one with ingredients measured into like 10 different containers. Meanwhile everyone else was busy being super streamlined and efficient. It’s fine.

I’ve accepted my eccentricities.

Anyways this recipe is one I completely adore. I’ve been wanting to develop a recipe for mini bundt cakes for a while now. My plan was to use the recipe to justify the fact that my miniature bundt cake pan is currently taking up valuable space in our shoe closet. (The baking things have indeed expanded beyond the kitchen…)

The recipe starts with a cinnamon and greek yogurt cake batter. Cinnamon brings some warmth that goes really nicely with the hazelnuts in the streusel. The yogurt kind of does the opposite and brings a bit of tang to the cake, which keeps it light and moist.

The batter is then layered (I know, layering a cake batter is a lot, trust me here) into miniature bundt pans with a layer of toasted hazelnut streusel. You bake until they’re a slightly unappetizing pale color and then dunk them in chocolate ganache. Finish with some extra struesel and bam you’re done.

Now you just have to wash like 12 bowls. Sorry.

• It’s a mini recipe that makes just two cakes. Not that I’ve never made a dozen cakes for two people, but it’s not something I would necessarily recommend.
• Egg-free. I know it’s not vegan, but for anyone out there avoiding eggs and not butter, this is a great recipe. I also think (I haven’t tried it, though) that you could replace the butter and yogurt with vegan alternatives pretty easily.
• Taste: Toasty hazelnuts, warm cinnamon, tangy yogurt, dark chocolate and crunchy streusel. The balance and combination of flavors here is just too good.

To make a flax egg you just combine 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed with 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Stir it together and let it sit for about 10 minutes and then it’s ready to use. This is a great trick for anyone who is looking to scale down cake recipes because you can easily make half an egg, which is what I do in this recipe!

If you’ve ever baked a pastry or some kind of sweet bun (maybe a cinnamon roll) you might remember being told to give the pastry an egg wash. The egg wash helps give the surface of your pastry a nice golden brown color.

The color actually comes from the protein in the egg which promotes browning, while the fat in the egg yolk gives your pastry a nice glossy look.

In an egg-free cake you don’t have eggs (obviously) and so the cake doesn’t have that added protein which would ordinarily promote browning for your cake.

Side note: Sugar also leads to browning so you could increase the sugar but I prefer a slightly less sweet cake and don’t mind the pale color.

1) Make the hazelnut streusel

Start by tossing your hazelnuts into a pan and popping them in the oven to toast. I used this super cute little cast iron from Magnolia, but any baking dish is fine. The hazelnuts will take about 10 minutes to toast, and once they’re ready you’ll want to let them cool a bit.

In a miniature food processor blitz together some sugar, the hazelnuts and a pinch of salt. If you don’t have a miniature food processor a large one will definitely work. You could also crush the hazelnuts using a mortar and pestle or just chop them really finely and then mix in the sugar and salt. So long as you wind up with pretty small pieces of hazelnut you should be good.

This cake uses a flax egg which basically involves combining ground flax seed and water. The benefit of this is that we can effectively make half an egg.

While the water and flax are resting you can measure everything else out and start creaming together the butter and sugar. I use both brown and white sugar because I like the flavor but you could do all white sugar if you don’t have brown sugar.

Add the flax egg and the vanilla to the sugar and butter and whisk it together. Next you want to stir in half of the dry ingredients, followed by all of the yogurt and then the rest of the dry ingredients. The mixture will probably look thicker than you’re expecting but that’s normal.

Start by putting about 2 tbsp of cake batter in the base of your bundt pans. Sprinkle over a good teaspoon of streusel and then top with more cake batter. You are aiming for streusel in the middle, so depending on the shape of your pan you may need to put more or less batter in initially.

For reference, I use silicone mini bundt cake molds* and my pans hold about 1/2 cup of mixture.

Bake the cakes at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. At this point you expect a skewer inserted into the cake to come out clean and you should see some very slight browning on the top of the cakes.

Let the cakes cool for at least 10 minutes before trying to turn them out of their pans.

Heat some cream in the microwave and then pour it over chocolate chips. Stir the mixture together and you’re good to go!

Dip the cakes into the ganache or drizzle the ganache over the cakes with a spoon. Sprinkle with some extra streusel and enjoy!