Mini Lemon Bundt Cakes

Make these cute mini bundt cakes from scratch! Decorate them with lemon glaze and fruit for a delicious summer dessert. Or top them off with glaze, coconut and chocolate eggs for a spring treat. These bite size desserts are delicious and perfect for your next party or family gathering.

Mini Desserts

I enjoy making and serving bite sized desserts like these mini Bundt cakes! You can make tiny desserts in shot glasses, such as these mini cheesecake parfait, bake cakes like mini rum cake or make these little lemon cream puffs.

Small desserts are awesome for parties or picnics because they don’t require serving utensils or even silverware. Additionally they encourage portion control and enable you to indulge with less guilt.

Lemony Flavor

Lemon is the perfect cake flavor for these mini Bundt cakes. The cakes are sweet, of course, but the lemon gives them just a bit of tartness which adds a depth of flavor that plain vanilla cake just doesn’t have.

The little cakes are light and moist. They have a buttery lemon flavor and they aren’t dense or heavy like homemade cakes can sometimes be. Using lemon juice in the glaze gives them an extra lemony burst of flavor.

In order to get this lemon flavor the recipe calls for zesting and juicing some lemons, which does take a little bit of time and effort, but it is worth it! You could skip the lemon zest and use bottled lemon juice, but the cakes won’t taste nearly as lemony and delicious.

How to Make Mini Bundt Cakes

1. Juice and Zest the Lemons

You will need 3 lemons to make both the lemon cake and the lemon glaze. It is more efficient to zest and juice all three lemons at once and just save some of the zest and juice for the glaze.

Use a lemon zester to scrape off a layer of lemon peel from these lemons. Then use a citrus juicer to juice both lemons. You need about 2 Tablespoons of zest and 4 Tablespoons of juice for the cake. Save the rest of the zest and juice for making the glaze.

2. Prepare the Mini Bundt Pans

I used a 12 cake mini bundt pan to make these cakes. It needs to be greased well before each use. Even if it is labeled as non-stick it still needs to be greased. I used non-stick cooking spray to coat the pans. These cakes will absolutely stick in the pans if you don’t grease them!

3. Mix the Butter, Sugar and Eggs

Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer until they are well blended. You will get the best results if you use room temperature butter.

Once they are mixed add the eggs one at a time, blending well after each egg. Scrape the mixer bowl as necessary.

4. Get the Remaining Ingredients Ready

Combine the 4 Tablespoons of lemon juice and 2 Tablespoons of lemon zest with the buttermilk in a meansure cup. Don’t forget to save some juice and zest for the glaze!

In a separate bowl combine the flour with the baking soda and salt and stir to mix. Measure the flour carefully, because adding too much flour will affect the texture of the cakes.

5. Mix the Batter

Add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately to the mixer bowl about 1/3 at a time. Mix well after each addition until all the buttermilk and flour is mixed in.

6. Bake the Mini Bundt Cakes

Pour the batter, which will be thick, into the prepared, well greased bundt cake pan. Fill each cake about 1/3 full of batter. Bake 10-12 minutes, until the cakes are lightly brown on top and spring back when you touch them.

7. Cool the Cakes

Let the cakes cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Then turn the pan upside down and gently shake the cakes out. You might need to use a knife to loosen the edges of the cakes and lift them out.

8. Make Another Batch of Cakes

With this recipe and the mini bundt pan I used you will need to bake three batches of cakes to use up all the batter. You will get the best results if you let the pan cool, wash it, and re-grease it in between each batch.

I know, I know, it seems like a pain to cool and wash the pan. But every time I’ve tried to make multiple batches without doing that I have ended up with cakes that won’t come out and broken cakes.

The pan cools quickly so it doesn’t really add that much extra time. If you decide to ignore my advice and end up with broken cakes check out my recipe for Blueberry Lemon Trifle as a way of using up those not very pretty but still very tasty cakes.

Glaze the Cakes

The lemon glaze is made by combining melted butter, lemon juice, lemon zest and powdered sugar for an easy to spoon glaze. Even though the glaze tastes very lemony because of the lemon juice and lemon zest it dries white.

You could certainly add food coloring if you wanted to. Using pink or blue food coloring for a baby shower would be super cute!

Versatile Decorating

One of the best things about these mini cakes is you can do so many different things to decorate them. For a summer party I topped them off with blueberries and raspberries.

These fruits are the perfect size for the cakes and the perfect colors for a patriotic summer celebration like a Memorial Day cookout or Fourth of July picnic. They also make an excellent elegant dessert for a baby or wedding shower.

Last year for Easter I made these mini Bundt cakes again, but this time I decorated them with coconut and chocolate eggs for a cute birds nest dessert. The little birds nests are a lovely for spring or Easter.

You could also just decorated them with funfetti sprinkles for a birthday party. Or if you are looking for a more decadent dessert a chocolate ganache topping would be delicious.

Making a Full Size Bundt Cake

You could use this recipe for a larger size Bundt cake pan just by increasing the baking time. In a full size Bundt cake pan it would take about an hour to bake.