I know fall and October are all about pumpkin-ing everything, but for me it’s the scent of spices that speak of grey skies, cooling weather and holiday season to me. Example #1: This pistachio-cardamom cake from a couple weeks ago. Example #2: This cinnamon roll pound cake – or mini cake, to be exact, that gives me the warm, wrapped-in-a-cozy-sweater fuzzies.
Disclosure: There are Amazon affiliate links in this post.
Fellow food blogger Jocelyn Delk Adams’s new cookbook Grandbaby Cakes
Jocelyn’s cookbook is similarly filled with warm reminiscences about her childhood and the constant stream of goodies coming out from her grandmother’s kitchen. The old family photos and personal headnotes throughout the book really make it seem like you’re reading a treasured family cookbook, passed down through the generations. As I read through the book, I felt like I was in Jocelyn’s kitchen listening to her share stories about her aunts and uncles and cousins while she was whipping up a cake for me. She’s managed to capture one of the true joys of cooking and baking: the love that’s shared between making and eating food together.
Leafing through the book, the Cinnamon Roll Pound Cake caught my eye. Among all the spices in our cupboard, there’s no disagreement in our house on cinnamon. I love cinnamon, my husband loves cinnamon – cinnamon rolls are a no brainer for our household. I loved that Jocelyn described this cake as a way to have cinnamon rolls without having to deal with yeast. How could I not give it a try?
The recipe is designed for a standard 12 cup bundt cake pan. Because I had a new Bundtlette Cake Pan 
The cake batter, sweet with butter and sugar, is swirled with a rich streak of cinnamon goo, just like the best cinnamon rolls. The drizzle of cream cheese icing on top completes the homage to the traditional cinnamon bun. It’s kind of a cross between coffee cake, pound cake, and bundt pan, but whatever you choose to call it, it’s delicious. The crumb is solid but not too dense, and wonderfully tender – a perfect tea time cake. If you like the contrast of a crisp exterior to a soft interior, baking this cake mini-style in this swirl pan means more crisp outside surface area. Look at all the swirly ridges!
My husband could not stop eating these; that’s how tasty they were. They baked up beautifully in the mini bundt pan (just remember to grease and flour generously), and funnily enough I think they look a lot like French crullers! So they look like donuts, taste like cinnamon rolls, and are as easy to make as a cake. Sounds like a total winner to me!
There are dozens of equally inviting recipes in the book, like Red Velvet Cake with Blackberry Cream Cheese Frosting, Sea Salt Caramel Layer Cake, or Peach Cobbler Shortcake, all delectable, modern spins on some classic American favorites. If you’re looking to fill your house with the sweet scent of baking cake, of baking in the warm haven of your kitchen as the daylight wanes and the weather chills, I think you’ll enjoy this cozy gem of a book.
- ¾ cup (170 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup (200 g) sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1½ cups (206 g) cake flour, sifted
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup (115 g) sour cream, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2½ tablespoons (36 g) unsalted butter, melted
- ⅓ cup (74 g) light brown sugar
- 2½ teaspoons (6½ g) all purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ounce cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon (14 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup (90 g) confectioners' sugar
- ⅛ cup(30 g) milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Generously grease and flour a 6-cup mini bundt cake pan (or you can use a smaller pan and have some batter left over).
- Beat butter in stand mixer with paddle attachment for 1 minutes on high speed.
- Slowly add the sugar. Cream together for another 5 minutes until very pale yellow and fluffy.
- Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add the flour in 2 additions and beat on low speed just to combine.
- Add the salt and baking soda and beat just to combine.
- Add the sour cream, oil, and vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and mix just until batter is combined. Be careful not to overmix. Set the batter aside.
- Whisk together all the ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Pour ½ of the batter into the prepared pan.
- Drizzle ½ of the cinnamon swirl mixture over the the batter. Using a butter knife or skewer, swirl the mixture through the batter.
- Pour the rest of the batter over the pan, making sure not to fill it more than ¾ full to avoid overflowing.
- Drizzle the rest of the cinnamon swirl mixture over the top and swirl.
- Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out mostly clean.
- Let cool on the wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert cakes onto a serving plate. Let cool to room temperature.
- Beat cream cheese and butter together in a stand mixer with paddle attachment for 2 minutes on medium-high.
- Reduce mixer speed to low and add in confectioners' sugar in two additions, beating to combine.
- Add in milk and vanilla extract and beat until very smooth, with no lumps.
- Drizzle icing over the cooled cakes. Serve at room temperature.
Anita Chu, also known as pastrygirl, is a baker, writer, and photographer with a passion for pastry. She trained at Tante Marie's Cooking School and is the author of Field Guide to Cookies, Field Guide to Candy, and Lollipop Love. Anita lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, and dog Max. 
from what i’ve seen, this cookbook looks amazing! i want to try to cook/bake through the ones i have now a bit more, but it’ll be next on my to get list. and that swirl- love that there’s a good amount of cinnamon in there, so it actually has flavor instead of being just a decoration!
I can almost smell the cinnamon – and these cakes are almost too pretty to eat.
I love the swirl and icing on top! I bet that my husband wouldn’t be able to stop eating them either.
I love this recipe….I may try it this weekend.
these are SO pretty!!! they almost remind me of cake donuts too. LOVE!
Those look delicious and are so cute!
These sound/look delicious, and they look so pretty, too! Also, I JUST saw the Grandbaby Cakes book for the first time like an hour ago online. Your photography is beautiful, too!
These look absolutely incredible!! My husband loves cinnamon rolls, so I’m definitely going to have to give this recipe a try.
I’ll have to check out the book. Thanks for sharing.
These cakes are gorgeous and the texture look like absolute perfection! I’ll have to check out the book next time I go to Barnes and Noble. 🙂
These look delicious. Great for entertaining.
These are absolutely beautiful. I love that you made them into mini cakes. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe and the information about my book. I’m so grateful!
Holy wow, these look incredible!
Oh yeah! I am stumbling this for later use!!!
Thanks for sharing JenniferDawn!
These are super-cute! LOVE!! They really do look scrumptious…I’d eat a few for sure! I had no idea she had a cookbook out…Good for her, can’t wait to check it out!
These little cakes are so elegant looking. This cookbook sounds like a real winner and one I need to add to my collection. Nice recipe and fabulous cakes!
These little cinnamon roll pound cakes are adorable! They look amazing and I’m totally craving one right now!
Beautys, I fell in love 🙂 I would love to try them as soon as possible! I love cinnamon!!
All the best from Germany
These look sooo good. I have been looking for cinnamon rolls recipes all over and this one seems different than the ones I have found so far – will definitely try the recipe. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Just curious about the gram weight of cake flour you used. Usually, cake flour is about 110g per cup, but you listed 206g for the 1 1/2 cups you used for your scaled down version of the recipe. Also, in your recipe, you stated “1 1/2 cups flour, sifted” but in Jocelyn Delk Adams’s original recipe, the text reads “3 cups sifted flour.” Do you think this was an error, or do you believe she sifted before measuring? That would make for an even lighter weight of cake flour. Thanks for any insight you can offer!
Hi babycake5,
Thanks for this really good question. I apologize for not responding sooner as I wanted to double check what I used in my recipe testing. First, the original recipe is by Jocelyn, so I would defer to her recipe for correct ingredient amounts and how it is meant to turn out.
As I understand, “3 cups sifted flour” would mean the flour is sifted before measuring. If we use a commonly accepted 100 g/cup, that would be 300 g and half of that would be 150 g.
I typically weigh out my dry ingredients and convert the measurements to volume equivalents afterwards. In this case I was using 137 g/cup of unsifted flour, which would be sifted afterwards. I went back and re-weighed a cup of flour and got 130 g/cup. So 1 1/2 cups of unsifted cake flour would be closer to 195 g, which is still about 45 g difference between sifting before and after.
So the short answer to your question is that you are right, there is a big difference. I should have checked my conversions more carefully. That said, I did like how the texture of my cake turned out, so if you use 206 grams of cake flour, you should get a good result. If you want something closer to Jocelyn’s original recipe, I would use 150 grams of cake flour. I will retest my cake and adjust my recipe if I prefer the result with less flour. Thanks so much again for your input! I appreciate it!