Peppermint Bundt Cake -- The Second Pie Goes Next Door, and the Season Turns

The squash and root vegetables came in over the week — nine butternuts, fourteen acorn squash from the volunteer plant that has been producing since July, twenty-two pounds of potatoes, eighteen of onions, the beets buried in sand. The root cellar looks as it should in late October: organized, dark, cool, full. I walked through it on Saturday and stood for a moment in the way I always do at this point in the season, feeling the weight of what has been put by. This is an old feeling, older than my own life, the feeling of an agricultural people at the end of harvest. I have it every year and every year it is enough.

The apple pie happened Saturday afternoon — the lard crust, the Cortland-McIntosh blend I have settled on after years of variation, the cinnamon-nutmeg-allspice mix that is the same proportions Helen wrote in the 1979 notebook. The crust was excellent, which it almost always is when the lard is cold enough and the handling is minimal. I made two pies: one for the house and one for Ted and Patricia's table, the second being principally for Owen and his younger brother, who have established themselves as reliable consumers of anything I bring next door.

Teddy called Sunday evening from the restaurant kitchen where he has been working two evenings a week. He called from the parking lot at ten-thirty, still in his whites, and the call lasted forty minutes. He had an experience this week that he wanted to talk through: a senior cook had corrected his sauce work in front of the rest of the kitchen, not harshly but publicly, and he was not sure whether to feel grateful or humiliated or both. I told him the honest answer: you should feel both, and the useful thing to do with both feelings is pay close attention to the correction, because a correction in front of others is a sign that the senior cook thinks you are worth correcting. Corrections are investments. He went quiet and then said he had not thought about it that way. I told him to go home and sleep and think about the correction in the morning when the emotional charge had worn off. He said: okay. He called me back Monday morning to say the correction was correct and he had already adjusted.

The apple pies were spoken for — one for the house, one for Ted and Patricia’s table — and Saturday still had hours left in it after the root cellar walk, the kind of quiet late-afternoon hours that ask to be filled with something in the oven. I had been thinking about a peppermint Bundt cake for a few weeks, the way it bridges the harvest season into the colder months ahead, and with Teddy on the phone Sunday night talking through corrections and corrections-as-investments, I thought about what it means to make something with intention and care. This cake is that: layered, deliberate, worth the effort, and sturdy enough to travel next door.

Peppermint Bundt Cake

Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 55 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• Red gel food coloring (optional, for swirl effect)
• For the glaze: 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 3–4 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• Crushed peppermint candies or candy canes, for topping

Instructions

1. Prepare the pan. Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan, making sure to coat every crevice. Set aside.
2. Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed for 3–4 minutes until pale and fluffy. Scrape down the sides as needed.
4. Add eggs and extracts. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla and peppermint extracts and mix to combine.
5. Combine wet and dry. With the mixer on low, alternate adding the flour mixture and the sour cream and milk (combined), beginning and ending with the flour. Mix only until just combined — do not overwork the batter.
6. Create the swirl (optional). Remove about 1 cup of batter to a small bowl and stir in a few drops of red gel food coloring. Spoon plain batter into the prepared Bundt pan, then drop spoonfuls of red batter over the top and drag a skewer or butter knife through once or twice for a marbled effect.
7. Bake. Bake for 50–58 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the thickest part comes out clean and the top springs back lightly when touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert onto the rack to cool completely before glazing.
8. Make the glaze. Whisk together the sifted powdered sugar, heavy cream, and peppermint extract until smooth and pourable. Add cream a half-tablespoon at a time to reach a drizzleable consistency.
9. Glaze and finish. Drizzle the glaze evenly over the cooled cake, letting it run down the sides. Scatter crushed peppermint candies over the top before the glaze sets.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 65g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 210mg