Time for Nothing Bundt Cakes — and a Food Gal Giveaway
Bundt cakes are among the most homespun of baked goods.
Baked in one pan, then drizzled with a pretty glaze, it’s simple, sweet and thoroughly nostalgic.
Leave it to Nothing Bundt Cakes to take that basic premise and add major bling.
The bakery just opened a seventh locale in the Bay Area in the Fremont Hub Shopping Center (39952 Fremont Hub). It bakes up nine flavors of cake (from Red Velvet to Pecan Praline to Chocolate Chocolate Chip), then glides on a thick cream cheese frosting down the sides like the petals of a flower. If that weren’t enough, a colorful paper bloom fills the center, then fun paper butterflies, bees or other decorations are added. It’s a total party in a cake.
The cakes, themselves, are quite moist and have a surprisingly airy texture that’s more like a sponge cake rather than your typical dense, heavy bundt cake.
The cakes come in various sizes — from the Bundtini (the size of a cupcake; $18.75 for a dozen) to the single-serve Bundlet ($3.99) to a 10-inch cake that serves about 18 ($39.50).
Cakes are available at the bakery, as well as by phone and online orders.
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a gift card good for one free Nothing Bundt Cake individual Bundlet every month for a year (a $47.88 value). The only catch is that the winner must pick up the Bundlet each month in person at the Fremont store. As such, this contest is limited to those who can make it to Fremont regularly. Entries will be accepted through midnight PST Jan. 14. Winner will be announced Jan. 16.
How to win?
Just tell me your favorite memory involving cake.
Here’s mine:
“When I was in middle school, my favorite pastime on weekends was baking. My best friend and I loved nothing better than to grab mixing bowls and measuring spoons from my parents’ kitchen to whip up every kind of cake imaginable. One afternoon, we decided to make a layer cake. For some reason, we had a little trouble getting one layer to stack on top of the other neatly. As we positioned it on top of the bottom frosted layer, a small crack formed in the center of the top layer. We fretted and sighed. Then, we grabbed our spatulas and bowl of thick, white frosting and went to work like a couple of bricklayers with mortar, filling in that crevice with an inordinate amount of frosting until you couldn’t tell anything was amiss. Later that night, we cut into the cake, passing out slices to my family, who all declared it a delicious success. I watched my Dad dig into his slice, only to see his eyebrows raise in amazement as he took a forkful and declared, “Wow! A lot of frosting!” I looked at my best friend. She looked at me. We kept mum as we stifled knowing chuckles that my Dad had gotten the slice with the stalactite of frosting that had formed deep into it.”
My favorite memory involving cake was throwing my husband a huge birthday party with all his friends, he was so happy. The best part for me was getting my friend Windy to pick up the famous Chocolate Tower Cake from DeLessio Market & Bakery in SF. It’s a giant cake that’s about 3 ft tall made up with all chocolate. It was the most beautiful & best taking cake I’ve ever had.
Cute name for the store, Carolyn. And a fun giveaway. Wish I could enter!
My favorite cake story…..
I don’t have many, because I used to have a terrible fear of baking.
As I was working in a high end appliance store, my boss told me to bake a cake for a very special upcoming event. Of course, I was terrified, but I reminded myself, “never let them see you sweat.”
I found a recipe (all from scratch) for a French vanilla cake with butter cream frosting, smothered in almonds.
I decided to “kick it up a notch” and added a raspberry filling, which I also made from scratch.
The cake turned out SO WELL, that they took photos of it, added it to their website, and included it in their on-line cookbook.
That was the end of my fear of baking. Ever since then I LOVE to bake….just ask me about the Tres Leches cake I made for Christmas 😉
I was just getting nostalgic about bundt cake just recently because I was thinking I hardly see bundt cake pans anymore at the stores. Anywho, Fremont is a bit far off for me, even for free cake. Plus, that thick cream cheese frosting looks odd, almost rope like. I’m more the traditionalist and prefer the glazes that dripped off the ridges.
I am a big fan of bundt cakes and I have much respect for anyone who can get them out of the pan in one go, without any sticking. I even once wrote a whole blog post called “Bundt Pan Paranoia” about the evils of bundt cakes that don’t come out. There was a fantastic bundt cake bakery in LA that closed recently called Kiss My Bundt. And ever since, I’ve wanted to go to this Bay Area bundt bakery because I’ve driven by them several times with my mom when I’m in norcal visiting!
my husband has a story: his sister was getting married and everyone in the family had a role. his father’s job was to secure what is called a pyebek dak, which is a specially prepared wedding chicken that, even though it is cooked, is made to look like it is alive (i mean its not moving but it has its feathers etc). his father, unfortunately, was very very ill and was on a lot of meds and really shouldnt have been given this responsibility. he went out and bought the chicken and promptly placed it in the bedroom closet for safekeeping. he arrived at the wedding site having completely forgotten about it and actually had no memory of buying it. one of my husbands cousins ran around trying to see if they could secure another chicken near the wedding reception but couldnt. instead she bought peach sponge cake from a bakery nearby.
my husbands father felt terrible about it and couldnt believe he forgot to buy it.
it wasnt until a couple days later that my husbands mom found it in the bedroom closet.
okay, so cake wasnt exactly featured, but this true story still has cake in it.
moral: never give someone on a lot of meds responsibility.
though these are not the photos of the sorry chicken in the story (its kind of a depressing story isnt it? sorry!) here are some pictures of pyebek dak so that you have some idea of what these chickens look like (these particular ones are rather ornate and probably a lot more expensive than the ones that my father in law bought): http://bit.ly/yn0vkY & http://bit.ly/yOqG1r
Roseann: Wow, talk about learning something new every day. I never heard about this wedding chicken tradition before. How very interesting!
I love this store, we have one near by and I have the feeling that we already tried all the flavors of the bundt cakes 🙂
Hope you have a wonderful week ahead Carolyn!
Carolyn– so funny that this contest is for Nothing Bundt Cakes as I just tried their bundts for the first time this Christmas break– they’re delicious!!
As far as my favorite cake memory goes, I would definitely have to include my grandmother (who taught me how to cook/bake/LOVE food). As a traditional Japanese grandmother, my ‘Ba-chan’ was never one for typical sweets. Instead, she very carefully crafted an assortment of Japanese “Mochigashi” sweet rice cakes for birthdays and other holidays. Before she passed away, I had the opportunity to craft some of these cakes with her and although I can’t for the life of me get the recipes right without her, I still get nostalgic when I eat Japanese cakes like hers.
My boyfriend’s cousin is an accountant, and every April 15th he has a “tax party” in Gilroy, CA. It is a potluck party and you can either bring an app or dessert. I usually bring both. I had my “famous” flourless chocolate cake in the back seat. Since the first part of the party is outside and it can get cold I ran back inside just before we left to grab my warm wool cape. I noticed as I picked it up that is was pretty covered in cat hair. I tossed it in the back seat and we were off to the party.
you guessed it, I had tossed it on top of the cake – while the cake wasn’t damaged, I did imagine it now included a fair bit of cat hair. Thank goodness I had packed powdered sugar and a sifter to decorate the top on site (aka cover the cat hair)
No one noticed – at least no one said anything – and it was all gone at the end of the party.
When my children had birthdays, I would make their cakes, I made bundt cakes a lot during the 1970’s. Our favorite was one loaded with chocolate, sour cream and 3 eggs. That was before we cared about fat and cholesterol. When I served adults, it was wine bundt cake.
When I didn’t make bundt cake, I baked cakes in a 13×10 pyrex dish. We didn’t serve “slices of cakes”. When we wanted to eat some, we would call out “can someone cut me a row of cake?”
Well, I can’t get to the Fremont store but my best friend who lives in SF can! Can I enter on her behalf?
Either way. Favorite cake memory. Back in college I tried to make a chocolate vegan cake for one of my friends. This was before veganism was as popular as it is today so there weren’t as many good recipes out there. The cake was an absolute failure, but we laughed about it for DAYS!
My favorite memory about cake was when I was about 10 or 11. My dad loved maraschino cherry cake and I loved to get a store boxed cake mix and add the cherries to the cake mix. I did this many times for him and he got the biggest kick out of eating a cake that I had made for him. He would sit reading the newspaper while I had a big wooden spoon that I used to mix up the batter and then he would supervise as to how many cherries I should use to put in the cake. Then, one year, Christmas arrived and there were quite a few wrapped presents under the tree for me, way more than usual. My dad handed me one present and asked that I open it first. It was an electric mixer, then he handed me another present and it was a cake mix and another and another present until I had unwrapped about 30 individual Betty Crocker cakes mixes. My dad was glowing from ear to ear. The one final present that he had especially wrapped for me was a huge jar of, you guessed it, maraschino cherries. I did get other gifts that year but I don’t think any of them meant as much to me as all those individually wrapped cake mixes.
My dad passed away many years ago but I would give anything to bake him another maraschino cherry cake. I will never forget that Christmas morning with all those cake mixes stacked up around me and my dad’s beaming smile as I got busy with my new electric mixer and baked him a beautiful Christmas Maraschino Cherry Cake. Ahhh, such good memories.
Oh what a great giveaway! Makes me want us living back there even more!! I know whoever wins this will be truly blessed because they look amazing!
One of my favorite cake memories was the planning and execution of the cakes at our wedding.
Being the baker of the two of us, I turned to my then fiance (now husband) one day during the planning stages and insisted that our dessert display had to be as amazing as our food selection(we hired three gourmet food trucks).
We ended up with desserts to accommodate all palettes (the sweet-cautious and sugar lovers alike) and hired two caterers to achieve cake nirvana! Two cake towers and a dessert table later I found myself answering the question “where did you find this cake?!?!” to many a friend and family member.
Knowing that the one’s I love enjoyed dessert made all that extra planning so worth it (plus the tastings didn’t suck either).
Love the crazy thick icing! I also love bundt cakes! I just made a whiskey one over the holidays. Too bad that I don’t live in CA…or maybe it’s a good thing!
I would so love to win one of these! It’s only for the Fremont location? We have one in Del Mar too!
I’m currently on bed rest during a really difficult bed rest and while I was in the hospital, my husband brought me one of these amazing bundt cakes! It was likE HEAVEN in miniature portion. For a second I forgot about the IVs, the meds, the bed rest and all of that. He’s been bringing them for me ever since (been 8 weeks already!) and they never disappoint! I love the chocolate one with the yummy chocolate chips and creamy frosting.
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