Insane Pudding Bundt Cake

Marilyn sent me this recipe, and it got bumped around the queue I keep of Recipes I’ll Probably Maybe Make One Day. The ingredients didn’t… speak to me. Like a homeless lady with a diagnosable mental illness, I wait for recipe ingredients to speak to me, and usually out loud.

(True non-sequitur homeless lady story: last summer I was walking with a spring in my step down Wells Street when a destitute woman, as though possessed with a sudden and fierce urge to tell everyone within at least a six-block radius what her sage advice was for me was, yelled “GET A JOB YOU UGLY WHORE”. In her gravely and strangely-deep masculine voice.)

Here’s the thing: I trust Marilyn. Her carrot cake was one of the most revered things around the office we used to work at together (a place where I tried hard for years to dethrone her as the Queen Baking Bee, even with my World’s Greatest Fudge Brownie… to no avail, as anyone who ever tried her carrot cake can attest). For real- when that cake showed up on special occasions, like for any one of the many restructured-out-of-their-roles employees’ last days, a hushed whisper would spread like cream cheese frosting across the third floor. The whisper had nothing to do with the fact that it was Gary’s last day (although it was sad to see Gary go). The whisper had everything to do with the fact that the carrot cake was on the premises, and that everyone knew there wouldn’t be enough to go around. It was a very stressful time.

Back to me trusting Marilyn. When she mailed me a recipe that had cake mix and pudding mix in it, I simply chose any other from-scratch recipe in the queue to bake first, for like four months, because I have a (possibly) limiting belief that you’ll respect me more as a baking blogger if I make desserts from scratch. Yeah, well, screw that. On her note, Marilyn wrote “this looks rather unexciting, but it really is wonderful!”. I broke down and made it, because Marilyn’s reputation preceded her. And let me tell you- she still reigns supreme. I haven’t received this many compliments on a cake since the last one I made from a freaking mix. Seriously, it is absolutely incredible. Everyone loved it. And it was easy to make. Cheers, Queen Baking Bee. I owe you one!

TOPPING:

1 1/2 cup pecans (or walnuts), lightly toasted & chopped

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed

2 teaspoons cinnamon

CAKE:

4 eggs

1 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 box yellow cake mix

I small box instant vanilla pudding mix

1 small box instant butterscotch pudding mix

GLAZE:

1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/2 tablespoons milk
1. Preheat oven to 350º and generously grease a Bundt pan; set aside.
2. TOPPING: in a small bowl, mix topping ingredients together. Pour 1/3 evenly across bottom of prepared pan. Reserve remaining 2/3.
3. CAKE: In a large bowl, beat eggs, water and oil until frothy (2 minutes). Add cake mix and pudding mixes, and beat on high speed for 3 minutes.
4. Pour half of batter into pan, sprinkle half of remaining topping mixture across surface of batter, then pour remaining batter into pan. Sprinkle remaining topping mixture to top of batter.
5. Bake as follows:
  1. 20 minutes @ 350º
  2. 10 minutes @ 340º
  3. 10 minutes @ 330º
  4. 10 minutes @ 320º
6. Cake is done when cake tester comes out clean. Remove from pan immediately after removing from oven.
7. GLAZE: Melt ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat, and bring to a boil for one minute. Pour over cake while both glaze and cake are still warm. Allow to set.
8. Keep tightly covered. Try not to eat it all on Day 1.
Tips:
- Yellow cake mix. Not white, or vanilla. Yellow.
- Small box of instant pudding mix. I had to spend time in the pudding section, because there really are two sizes of almost every kind of pudding. (OMG- they have pistachio pudding mix, and it’s bright green. I dare you to try it.)
- Staggered baking times? I had nothing to do with Marilyn’s fancy footwork with the oven temperature changes (mostly because I’m just lucky if our oven stays on at 350º for 50 minutes; if I adjust the dial to lower the temperature, it shuts off). Your call if you want to follow the instructions to a T or pop into the oven, nap for 45 minutes, and hope for the best.
- I doubled the topping. Marilyn did suggest “making a bit more” in her note to me, so I interpreted that to mean “twice as nice”. You’ll see from the picture above that I had a little pecan altercation, since some of it stuck to the pan. It was still amazing.
- Pecans vs. walnuts… I chose pecans because The Husband likes them better than walnuts, but man, there is a time and a place for them both. The original recipe calls for walnuts, so…
- THE GLAZE is a More Sweets Please deviation, and it’s an amazing one, if I do say so myself. Marilyn, you can take this modification from me and use it from now on. No charge.
- This freezes so well. The preservatives in the mixes do a nice job of keeping the cake amazingly moist when you make it, AND when you thaw it.
- ENJOY. You can’t not love this cake. Thank you, MK!
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March 19th, 2016 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: Cakes, Nuts