I finally got round to researching Bundt recipes, recently, and was surprised (and, in a way, quietly impressed) to find that, as an idea, they are nothing more than a commercial construct. Even more so than the famous Ploughman's Lunch, which at least had something edible as its baseline. The concept of 'Bundt' it turns out was created by a company in the US, sometime in the fifties I think, as a way of promoting a series of interestingly shaped baking pans..and nothing more. Distantly, the idea was related to the traditional Guglhopf, or rather it was from the idea of the shape of the Guglhopf that the Bundt was derived, but it's at that point that any connection with tradition of any kind definitively finishes. The word 'Bund' was apparently adopted as a nod to the idea of a 'group' or a 'party', and the 't' was added to the end of the word for no more complicated a reason than that it allowed the manufacturer to patent their product. So, out of the window go all those half-formed ideas of old cobbled streets and the charm of medieval towns somewhere in central Europe...to be replaced instead with the uncharming reality of a modern industrial complex somewhere in ...Pittsburgh, I think it is.
And, along with all of that comes the recognition that Bundt cakes have no base theme in the sense of a recipe, and variations that flow from it. A Bundt cake is a cake which is made using a Bundt pan, and therefore any version of a sponge format which will reliably hold the shape of the pan once unmoulded will happily fit the bill. This particular recipe produces a dense, but not heavy cake, with good texture and flavour.
Ingredients: 4 medium eggs, separated; 160g butter; 250g sugar; zest and juice of 1 lemon; 500g ricotta; generous pinch of salt;1 tsp baking powder; 200g semola flour (or semolina); icing sugar (to decorate).
Method:
1. Heat the oven to 170 degrees C; grease your bundt mould.
2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice and zest; add to this the ricotta and salt, and mix in well.
4. In a third bowl, combine semola flour and baking powder, and then fold this into the lemon mixture, making sure everything is thoroughly amalgamated.
5. Fold into the mixture the beaten egg white, and then pour this into the greased mould, levelling the top afterwards. Bake for 50 minutes (usual test - if a skewer inserted comes out clean, the cake is done).
Leave the baked cake to stand for ten minutes, outside the oven, before you un-mould it, and, finally, sift icing sugar over the top, to accentuate the lines of the pattern.
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