Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bundt Cake

A lovely Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bundt Cake sweetened with coconut sugar and made with a trio of gluten-free flours. It’s topped with a delicious maple syrup and brown butter glaze.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bundt Cake Recipe

Not to present an argument that you should choose to serve a different Thanksgiving dessert — stay tuned next week for yet another gluten-free pumpkin pie recipe, which I will happily state is my best one yet — but if you were to consider an alternate (or more realistically, an addition to) may I suggest this gluten-free pumpkin bundt cake? It’s inspired by a New York Times recipe (click for the original version if you don’t need to do gluten-free) and is, if I may say so myself, really quite lovely.

This is a beautifully pumpkin-flavored cake, packed with lots of cozy spices like cinnamon and cardamom, and sweetened with the dark richness of coconut sugar. It’s topped with a just sweet enough maple syrup and brown butter glaze which to me feels so special and holidayish.

I used teff flour in this recipe as the main gluten-free flour and balanced it with a mix of tapioca and sweet white rice flour for lightness and binding. The resulting fall-flavored, rather luscious bundt cake is topped with a delicious glaze and scattered with a few pumpkin seeds. I love thinking as well as pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and I think this cake would be a worthy contribution to any gathering.

What You’ll Need

See the recipe card at the end of this post for the full ingredient amounts and instructions.

• Teff flour: A hearty whole grain gluten-free flour
• Sweet white rice flour: Works as a binder in gluten-free cakes
• Tapioca flour: Brings binding and fluffiness to gluten-free cakes
• Baking powder and baking soda
• Ground spices: Cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, allspice
• Coconut sugar: An unrefined sugar great for baking
• Unsalted butter
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Eggs: Use large eggs in this recipe
• Pumpkin puree: Pure pumpkin is best here
• Sour cream
• Maple syrup

How to Make Pumpkin Bundt Cake

• Prepare the pan. Well-butter a 12-cup (or larger) capacity bundt pan.
• Whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and allspice until well combined.
• Using a mixer, beat together the wet ingredients. In a large bowl using a hand of stand mixer, beat together the brown sugar, butter and olive oil on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing in well. Add the pumpkin purée and sour cream, and mix until well combined, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl as necessary.
• Combine the wet and the dry. Fold in the dry ingredients using a rubber spatula until well combined.
• Rest the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top and firmly tap the pan on the countertop a few times to release any large air bubbles. Cover the batter loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 15 minutes.
• Bake the cake. Then preheat oven to 350°F. Bake the cake until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean and the edges are starting to come away from the sides of the pan, 55 to 65 minutes, checking often.
• Cool the cake. Remove from oven and place the cake on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes, then use the tip of a knife to loosen the edges and invert the cake onto the rack to cool completely before glazing.
• Make the glaze: Once the cake is cool, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook the butter, occasionally scraping the bottom and sides of the pan with a rubber spatula until it turns a deep golden brown and smells nutty, for a few minutes.
• Finish the glaze. Transfer butter to a heat-safe bowl, and let it cool slightly. Whisk in the powdered sugar and maple syrup until smooth. The glaze should be thick but pourable. If it’s too thin, add a bit more powdered sugar. If it’s too thick, add a few drops of water.
• Glaze the cake. Transfer the cake to a serving platter and pour the glaze evenly over the top. Sprinkle with seeds if desired. Let the glaze set for a few minutes before slicing.

Tips for Success

• Rest the batter: Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes before baking. Gluten-free flours benefit from a rest to let them absorb liquids.
• Use room temperature ingredients: Bring ingredients to room temperature before using.
• Make it a sweet potato bundt cake: If you want to mix things up, swap an equal amount of cooked, pureed sweet potato for the pumpkin puree!

Substitution Suggestions

• Flour substitutes: Use oat or sorghum flour in place of the teff flour. Swap arrowroot for the tapioca and almond flour for the sweet white rice flour.
• Butter substitute: Use an additional 1/2 cup of olive oil in the cake. For the butter in the glaze, use melted coconut oil (do not brown it).
• Coconut sugar substitute: Use brown sugar in place of the coconut sugar.
• Sour cream substitute: Use the equivalent amount of Greek yogurt.
• Make it dairy-free: Substitute your favorite unflavored non-dairy yogurt.

How to Store

The cake will keep, well-covered in the fridge, for 3 days.

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