Family Favourite Cinnamon Cake

Sometimes you can hold in your hand the best, well-tested, recipe in the whole world, and if you aren’t using the right cookware or bakeware, your fabulous recipe can still fall flat.

Or maybe just stick to the pan.

Last fall, my sister and I set out to make one of our family’s favourite dessert recipes, our mother’s “Cinnamon Cake”. This is a cake we have both made – many times before.

But you wouldn’t know it by the disaster that emerged from my oven that night.

You see, I had somehow lost my trusty angel food cake pan, and only realized this after heating up the oven and getting the ingredients ready to go.

Thank goodness for great neighbours! They offered to let me borrow their “bundt” pan, which I thought was terrific.

That was until I went to pick up the pan, and my neighbour warns me that every time they bake a cake it the pan, it sticks to the sides.

No worries, I thought – I was just happy to have a pan I could bake the cake in. Besides, my sister said she had one at home and uses it all the time. She said we just needed to grease the inside of the pan well.

Of course, I trusted my sister’s expert advice – she had done this before!

So, we poured the cake batter and topping into the well-greased bundt pan, and popped it into the oven. We sat and waited with great anticipation, as the sweet smell of cinnamon filled the air.

PING! The cake was ready!

I let my sister do the honours, as she knew how to handle this baby.

Or maybe not.

If only I had set up the camera before. You’d be sitting here right now…laughing.

I cannot do it justice with words, the effort it took us to get the cake out of the bundt pan. This effort involved the use of various kitchen tools, and a whole lot of shaking (not us – the pan).

Finally, the cake emerged from the pan, albeit in 2-3 big pieces. What you don’t know is that my sister is very artistic, so she was able to use her skills to patch together this delicious family favourite cinnamon cake. It may not have been pretty, but ohhh was it good!

With a slab of warm cake, and a freshly washed bundt pan in hand, I went back to see my neighbour. He looked at me and smiled.

He knew what disaster had just taken place in my kitchen.

We had a good chuckle and then I headed back home to enjoy a piece of this warm family favourite cinnamon cake!

This cake pairs well with – you guessed it – coffee!

Enjoy!

FYI – you will find the batter to be fairly “sticky”. For each layer, use a small ladle to scoop batter into pan and spread evenly using a small spatula. 

Also…for baking this cake, I highly recommend NOT using a bundt pan. I recommend using an angel food cake pan so you can lift the cake out of the pan (by holding on to the centre cone) when ready, slide knife under bottom of cake to loosen from pan, and simply lift cake over the cone (when cool). I have purchased a new angel food cake pan since our kitchen disaster, and made another cinnamon cake using it. The photos in this blog post come from this second cake using the angel food cake pan.