Who needs a glaze when you can have a crackily, sugary crust on your Bundtcake?

I’m a big fan of America’s Test Kitchen and enjoy The Well-Equipped Cook weekly e-newsletter that lands in my inbox. This week’s subject line caught my eye: “Let’s Make Beautiful Baked Goods” and the Test Kitchen Quick Tip is genius.

We wanted to come up with a way to give Bundt cakes a crackly, sugary crust while they bake, saving the need to make a frosting or glaze. First, we tried coating the pan with a hefty amount of vegetable oil spray before dusting it with granulated sugar, but the spray’s coating was too thin, and the cakes almost always stuck. Next, we tried brushing the pan with melted butter and then dusting it with sugar. These cakes released easily, but there was no crunchy coating (the sugar had dissolved in the water in the butter). In the end, we landed on brushing the pan with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil before coating it with 1/3 cup of sugar. It provided a thick coating of pure fat that was easy to brush on and guaranteed that the cake released with ease. What’s more, the sugar turned into just the lacy, sweet coating on the cake that we were looking for.

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