After the success of the Homemade Hostess Cupcakes before my first family visit to Bethesda, I decided that I would bake something every time we had visitors. This time, I wanted something that could be more of a snack cake than a dessert, so I dove into The Perfect Cake and found a Honey Oat Bundt that I thought would be perfect! Here’s how it went.

It’s important to note that I still don’t have a stand mixer, so when I’m choosing recipes I have to choose from those that don’t require one, which limits me a little bit. I also didn’t have a bundt pan, but a bundt felt like a snack cake to me, so I picked up a pan at Bed, Bath and Beyond last week. Here’s the full recipe for the cake:

As I mentioned, this recipe didn’t need a stand mixer, but it did need a food processor, which I have. The first step was to process the oats in the food processor until finely ground. I don’t think this took an entire minute; it was probably closer to 30 seconds.

Next was mixing the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, and then mixing them together. I wasn’t sure how easily the honey was going to incorporate into the wet ingredients—I thought it would stick to my whisk and make the mixture all clumpy—but it actually blended in quite smoothly, as did the wet into the dry ingredients.

Step three was to pour the batter into the pan and bake it. The one hiccup I had the last time I was baking was that I didn’t quite grease and flour the pan enough, so removing the cupcakes was difficult and stressful. I wasn’t about to let that happen again, so I generously sprayed the pan with oil and sprinkled it with flour, using my hands to spread the flour up the sides of the bundt pan. Then before pouring the batter in, I inverted the pan over the sink to let some of the excess oil drip out. The recipe said to bake the cake for 45 to 55 minutes; I did 50 minutes and it came out perfect. The cake was a beautiful golden-brown, and it was a cinch to get out of the pan.

The final step was glazing, after first letting the cake cool in the pan for 30 minutes. It was definitely important to use regular, liquid honey in the batter, but if you wanted to use raw honey for the glaze you could, since it required popping the honey and vanilla in the microwave to thin it out and make it ready for spreading. I placed the cake on a cooling rack and positioned a baking sheet below to catch the drips, then brushed on the glaze (I also didn’t have a pastry brush before finding this recipe, but picked one up on the same BB and B trip as the bundt pan).

I let the cake cool like this for two hours before I moved it from the rack, though the glaze was still a bit sticky at this point. Then all that was left to do was eat! The cake was nutty and sweet, crumbly but not dry. It was delicious just on it’s own:

But the real breakthrough was when Jeff decided to spread cream cheese on a slice. When I was younger, my mom used to buy these mini loafs of corn bread, which we would slice in half horizontally, lightly toast, then spread with butter and drizzle with honey. Eating a slice of this cake with cream cheese reminded me of that treat—it was nutty, tangy and sweet all at the same time. And then yesterday I added another element, because, as I firmly believe, everything is better topped with a fried egg.

When I set out to choose recipes to make for this family visit, I wanted a cake that could be eaten at any time of day, made with classic ingredients and flavors that everyone would enjoy. This cake fit the bill perfectly, and I will definitely make it again!