This generous bundt cake is a breeze to make and is possibly the best thing we’ve baked all year! The combination of simple ingredients, and three types of vanilla – extract, paste and pods ensures a cake of soul-food status. Serve slightly warm with lashings of buttermilk glaze, you can thank us later!

Prep:
25 mins
Cook:
70 mins
Serves:
10-12

Ingredients

Cake

  1. 20g butter, melted for greasing

  2. 250g unsalted butter, room temperature

  3. 3 cups (660g) caster sugar

  4. 7 large eggs

  5. 2 Queen Finest Vanilla Bean Pods

  6. 2 tsp Queen Victoria Concentrated Vanilla Extract with Seeds

  7. 2 tsp Queen Vanilla Bean Paste

  8. Pinch salt

  9. 3 cups (450g) plain flour

  10. ½ cup (125ml) buttermilk

  11. ½ cup (125ml) cream

Glaze

  1. 1 ½ cups (225g) icing sugar

  2. 1 tsp Queen Vanilla Bean Paste

  3. 2 ½ tbsp (50ml) buttermilk, at room temperature

  4. 20g unsalted butter, very soft

Method - Cake

  1. Step 1

    Preheat oven to 165C (fan forced) and grease a 3-litre capacity bundt tin with butter (baking spray is not recommended for this recipe).

  2. Step 2

    Beat butter in a stand mixer until pale and creamy. Gradually add sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Using a sharp knife, split Vanilla Bean Pods lengthways and scrape the seeds out with the tip if the knife. Add vanilla seeds, Vanilla Extract, Vanilla Bean Paste and salt to mixture and mix well.

  3. Step 3

    Sift in half flour, then add buttermilk and cream. Sift in remaining flour and mix until thoroughly combined. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 70 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Cool in tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Method - Glaze

  1. Step 1

    While cake cools, make the glaze. Whisk together icing sugar, Vanilla Bean Paste and buttermilk. Whisk in butter until smooth. Set a wire rack over a large baking sheet. Slowly drizzle glaze over cake. Leave to set before slicing and serving.

  • This cake is delicious served hot or cold. If it lasts, the flavours develop even more the next day.
  • If you don’t have a bottle of our Celebrating 120 Years Pure Vanilla Extract, swap with Vanilla Bean Paste to ensure the same strong flavour profile. Alternatively, double the quantities of your usual Queen vanilla extract/essence and reduce the buttermilk by 2 teaspoons.

Comments & Reviews

HI Team I bought a 21 x9cm bundt tin, not sure how many litre capacity it is, is this ok size for this recipe

Esther

Hi Esther, this tin should be ok for the recipe! Just be quite careful when pouring it in to the pan 🙂

Eloise

Hi.
I’m
Confused a bit with the cream. In the ingredients it has 1/2 cup of cream. It says in the method to add cream In Step 2 and 3?
So how much cream is really added in step 2 and 3??
Thanks.

Evan

Hi Evan, the word ‘cream’ in step 2 refers to the method of creaming your butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy. The 125ml of cream is added in step 3 along with the buttermilk. Sorry for any confusion, hopefully that clears it up for you 🙂 Happy baking, The Queen Team

Queen Fine Foods

Hi Queen…I just love making this cake, everyone raves about it and I recommend a raspberry swirl. I’m using a 2 litre bunt tin, and it fills the tin to the top so just a little to full a cake bake, so I’ve purchased another identical tin and I’m going to divide the batter by half in each tin, do you think this will work? I’m not looking particularly for it to rise, but I can’t find a smaller bunt tin that holds 1.5 litres, do you know where I could get one?. This is for competition so lots of cake being given away!. I do recommend doing a butter and sugar coating prep for the tin, you get a sweet slightly crusty coating…and you can get away with not icing the cake.

rachel

Hi Rachel, thanks for the lovely feedback – this recipe is a firm Queen favourite! Yes, splitting this recipe between two tins will be fine, but you will have to reduce the cooking time slightly to approximately 40 minutes. Unfortunately we haven’t tested it ourselves, so be sure to keep a close eye on it. Alternatively, you can use the excess batter for cupcakes! Happy baking, The Queen Team

Queen Fine Foods

Is this a dense cake? Whenever i make a cake with plain flour it seems really hard. There is no raising agent?

kylee

Hi Kylee! This cake has a dense crumb, but is extremely soft and moist. The trick to baking without a raising agent is beating the butter for long enough – at least 3-5 minutes. It should be be very pale, creamy and fluffy looking before you start adding the sugar. We hope you love it as much as we do!

Queen Fine Foods

Just put this in the oven, first Bundt cake I’ve made….I put a rasberry purée swirl through it…can’t believe how much cake batter there was! Will update on outcome.

Rachel

Hi Rachel! Yes this recipe makes a very large pound cake, we hope you love it as much as we do. A raspberry swirl sounds delicious!

Queen Fine Foods