The cutest little homemade fall dessert you ever did see, these mini pumpkin bundt cakes topped with a maple bourbon glaze are a moist and super simple to make.

I feel like fall desserts all about the pie, with pumpkin pie and pecan pie stealing the show. But a homemade, moist cake shouldn't be overlooked. And mini pumpkin bundt cakes are fun and can be an impressive plated dessert for a dinner party.
One of the easiest ways to really add a wow factor to any individual homemade dessert is with glaze. And when you can make a spectacular glaze with liquor in it, like this maple bourbon glaze, you're winning at life for sure.
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Ingredients for the cakes
These homemade mini pumpkin bundt cakes are super moist, using an oil-based cake recipe with the addition of sour cream. This cake has minimal ingredients, which makes for an easy recipe. Here is what you need:
- Oil. I am, and always have been an oil-based cake baker. I think oil gives a more moist texture to cakes than butter.
- Pumpkin. You can be ambitious and roast your own baking pumpkin or you can be like me (most of the time) and use canned pumpkin.
- Eggs
- Sour cream
- Flour
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Brown and white sugar
- Pumpkin spice mix. The usual, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger
Ingredients for the maple bourbon glaze
The glaze is so simple to put together and worth every short second of your time. It really takes this dessert from a plain cake to something spectacular, and company-worthy. Bourbon and maple are super complimentary a(have you tried my maple bourbon cocktail yet?) and a total fall flavor combination. Here's what you need:
- Butter
- Maple syrup
- Bourbon
- Powdered sugar
- Salt. the perfect compliment and balance to the sweet glaze
Instructions
Making mini pumpkin bundt cakes really couldn't be easier. One bowl combine the dry ingredients, and a larger bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Then fold the wet into the dry, being careful not to overmix and you're ready to spread the batter into the bundt pans for baking.
Making the maple bourbon glaze couldn't be easier. Brown up the butter in a sauce pan, this will give you extra, nutty flavor. Add the maple syrup to the browned butter and stir it together. Add the powdered sugar, bourbon and salt and whisk together.
What kind of pan do you use to make mini bundt cakes?
So I used individual small bundt pans I bought at an antique shop, like these. But there is an even easier way to make mini pumpkin bundt cakes. Mini bundt pans like this are widely available, and are even easier for making this delicious fall dessert.
Even if your reader doesn't follow a specific diet (eg. gluten free), they may have friends or family that they're cooking for that could use this. This is also a great idea to link out to another blogger with a similar recipe that fits a different diet.
How much do you fill mini bundt pans?
FIlling mini bundt pans is not as tricky as you think. You don't want to over fill them and have the batter spill all over, but you also don't want to underfill them and end up with a shriveled, tiny cake. My rule of thumb, no matter the pan you choose, you want to fill it ⅔ of the way. This will give you the perfect-sized cakes.
Swaps and variations
Since I am always about using what you have on had, and try my very hardest to make all my recipes adaptable, here are a few ideas to mix it up:
- Use mashed sweet potatoes instead of pumpkins. I have a great sweet potato cake recipe, that can use pumpkin interchangeably. And for mini pumpkin bundt cakes the same applies. You can easily use mashed or pureed sweet potatoes in place of the pumpkin puree.
- Use a full size bundt pan. Don't have mini pans, and don't really feel like buying them? Absolutely use a regular, full-sized bundt pan. Just be sure to adjust your baking time - increase it.
Tips for success
- Grease the hell out of the pan. Bundt pans have all kinds of crevices and grooves in them that are just waiting to hold onto your cake when you turn it out of the pan, make EXTRA sure to grease all of it.
- Don't overbake, Keep in mind these are mini bundt cakes, so they won't take as long as a full-size regular bundt cake, and you want them to be moist not dried out from baking too long.
Top tip
Get ready, this is a good one...scoop the thick cake batter into a piping bag, cut the tip off and pipe the batter into the bundt pans. THis is a super thick cake batter recipe that can be difficult to get into small pans. The literal easiest, most genius thing I can tell you when making these is to pipe that batter right into the mini bundt cake pans. If you don't have piping bags, use a ziploc bag - you aren't using a fancy decorating tip so it does not matter.
Equipment
- mini bundt pans
Ingredients
For the mini bundt cakes
- 2 cups flour
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup oil
- ¼ cup sour cream
- 2 eggs
For the maple bourbon glaze
- 4 tablespoon butter
- 2 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon bourbon
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
To make the cake
- Heat the oven to 350, and grease the hell out of the mini bundt pans to make sure nothing sticks!
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, salt and all three spices. Whisk them all together until smooth.
- In a medium or large bowl (larger than the first at least), whisk together the pumpkin, oil, sour cream and eggs.
- Add your flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and fold together. Don’t whisk together, fold with a spatula, the batter will be thick.
- Put batter ⅔ full in each bundt pan. Bake for about 25-30 minutes. When finished, let the cakes sit in the bundt pans for about five minutes before taking out of the pans and cooling completely on a wire rack. The cakes must be cooled before adding the glaze.
To make the frosting
- In a sauce pan melt the butter. Continue cooking until the butter begins turning slightly golden brown in color and begins to smell nutty. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the maple syrup and stir to combine. Then add the bourbon, powdered sugar and salt and whisk until smooth. Let sit for about 10 minutes.
- After the glaze has cooled for 10 minutes drizzle over the cooled mini bundt cakes.
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