I have twice made dulce de leche bundt cake. It’s basically a vanilla cake with blobs of rich dulce de leche mixed in and then baked in a bundt pan with one big ribbon of pure dulce de leche baked into the middle.

The first time I did this (probably a year ago in spring 2012 sometime), it turned out very well – I made multiple smaller bundt cakes because I was distributing baked goods among three separate floors of the building I worked in (and wanted each floor to get their own cake!). When I made one single bundt cake this time, I think I put the dulce de leche ribbon too close to the top of the cake (which would, of course, be the bottom of the pan), and then the top of the cake/bottom of pan was not baked quite well enough – so the top did not come out of the pan easily and there was a “wet” looking quality on top of the cake, which I tried to conceal using a dusting of vanilla sugar. Which would have been fine except that the moisture of the cake absorbed much of the vanilla sugar, giving the slight appearance of little clumps of white mold! Dear heavens. Not visually appealing at all.

Oh well, it was, in any case, eaten. Here at last is the recipe!

Dulce de leche bundt cake
1 1/2 cups dulce de leche (my easy dulce de leche recipe)
1 cup softened butter
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup buttermilk (I make a substitution using milk and lemon juice)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you used unsalted butter)
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

Butter and flour a 12-cup bundt cake pan.

Whisk dry ingredients together and set aside.

Cream butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Add one cup of dulce de leche. Mix well, then add the eggs one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition. Mix in the vanilla.

Turn mixer to low speed and alternately add in the dry ingredient mixture with the buttermilk.

Mix until just combined. Put about half the batter into the prepared bundt pan. Using the other 1/2 cup of dulce de leche, add the dulce de leche to the cake, making a ring of the dulce de leche in the center of the cake batter in the pan. Once this is done, carefully add the rest of the batter evenly on top of the ring of dulce de leche. Smooth it out.

Bake about 50 to 55 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the center comes out clean. You may need to bake slightly longer (especially to ensure that the bottom of the pan (top of the cake) is fully baked.

Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 20 minutes before inverting the cake onto a wire rack to remove from the pan. Allow the cake to cool completely.

You could create a caramel sauce for the cake before serving, or do as I did – simply sift vanilla sugar on top of the cake.