This moist and flavorful, soft Gluten Free Apple Bundt Cake is filled with fresh apples and cinnamon for the perfect homemade bite of fall!
Gluten Free Apple Bundt Cake was originally posted on November 15, 2021 and has been updated with new pictures, a new video, process pictures, and several new tips and information.
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Several years ago, my daughter and I were going pretty regularly to the Old Beach Farmer’s Market, which is a market at the beach here in VB that happens every Saturday morning during the summer, and once a month during the other months. A local baker sells slices of some of her cakes, and my daughter bought a slice of apple Bundt cake from her. Of course I couldn’t buy any because it wasn’t gluten free, but it looked SO GOOD! I came home and immediately went to work on a gluten free version.
This cake recipe will continue to be one of my and my husband's favorite cakes of all time. It has a very tender crumb with such a beautiful apple flavor from all those apples we fold into the batter. It never fails to impress us each time I make it, even though it's such an easy recipe and is very simplistic. Sometimes the homely little Bundt cake is the best cake of them all!
What you'll need for apple Bundt cake
For the cake
- Kim's gluten free all purpose flour blend - a store bought blend may be substituted, but hasn’t been tested.
- Cinnamon - not too much to overpower the apples, but to enhance them and bring some warmth to the cake.
- Oil - this is an oil-based cake, but you won't miss the butter at all. Oil is what makes this cake so moist.
- Peeled and diced apples - In my humble opinion, the BEST apples to use in baking are always Rome beauty (no Granny Smith apples for me, thank you very much!). Rome can be hard to find in stores, but you can order them online at certain times of the year. Honeycrisp.com is where I get all of my Rome apples. More on that below.
For the glaze
- Powdered sugar
- Milk
- Vanilla extract
Such an easy cake to make!
- Step 1: Grease Bundt pan and set aside.
- Step 2: Whisk together eggs and sugar in a large bowl until smooth. You can also do this using a mixer.
- Step 3: Add oil and whisk again.
- Step 4: Whisk together dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
- Step 5: Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, along with diced apples.
- Step 6: Fold until fully incorporated.
- Step 7: Pour into prepared Bundt pan. Bake for 1 ½ hours, or until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
- Step 8: Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto serving platter.
- Step 9: Whisk together glaze ingredients in medium bowl.
- Step 10: Spoon glaze over cake. Let set and then serve.
Gluten free apple Bundt cake FAQs
I personally prefer a softer apple to a firm apple in this cake. Something like a Rome, Golden Delicious, or Macintosh works very well.
If your Bundt pan is nonstick, I would just grease it. If it's not nonstick, I would both grease and flour the pan (using gluten free flour of course). Nothing is worse than flipping your pan over and all the details of the cake sticking inside the pan.
No, it can be kept at room temperature, covered, for up to 5 days.
How to freeze apples (yes, really!)
Every fall (around the end of September/beginning of October) I order a half bushel of my favorite baking apple, Rome Beauty, from honeycrisp.com. It comes with roughly 30 apples (depending on their size) and that's a whole lotta apples to use up in a short time! So why not freeze them?
I started this venture a few years ago when I really wanted to use only Rome apples in every apple recipe I baked. And when I'd see them in the stores, I'd buy extra and not know if I could use them up before they'd go bad. Enter the food saver and a freezer. I peel and chop or slice all the apples (sometimes you need slices and other times chunks). I'll fill up a food saver bag with enough for one recipe, seal it, and freeze it. Bags and bags are in my freezer almost at all times, ready to go for whenever the apple craving strikes. And let me add, they last for over a year y'all!! I've done it and it WORKS!
More gluten free apple recipes
- The BEST gluten free apple pie
- Bakery style gluten free apple fritters
- Gluten free apple cider donuts
- Gluten free apple turnovers
- Gluten free apple dumplings
- Gluten free apple crumble
- Gluten free apple crumb pie
- Easy homemade caramel apples
What are you waiting for? Grab your apples and make this Gluten Free Apple Bundt Cake now! It's so easy to make and yet tastes phenomenal.
Gluten Free Apple Bundt Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 cups (420g) Kim's gluten free all purpose flour blend (a store bought blend may be substituted, but hasn't been tested)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1¼ cups (300ml) vegetable oil (canola oil or any other neutral-flavored oil can be used instead)
- 2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 3 cups (about 2-3 large) apples, peeled and cut into cubes
Icing
- 2 cups (250g) powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoon warm milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat oven to 325° F. Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with non-stick spray and set it aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, add eggs, sugar, and oil. Blend on medium speed until thick, about 2-3 minutes.
- Add dry ingredients slowly to the egg/oil mixture and blend just to combine briefly. Add apples and mix on low until well combined. Batter will be thick.
- Spoon into prepared Bundt pan. Bake for 1½ hours, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool on a wire rack in the Bundt pan for 15 minutes before inverting onto a cake plate or stand to finish cooling.
For the Glaze
- Whisk icing ingredients in a small bowl or measuring cup until smooth and pour over cake. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Notes
Inspired by Paula Deen’s Uncle Bob’s Fresh Apple Cake
Amy says
I would like to try your recipe and wondering if I replace some of the sugar with applesauce would that work?
Kim says
Oh gosh, I honestly don't know. I'm not knowledgeable enough on baking with less sugar, but if I were to guess, I'd say that the texture of the cake would suffer.
Siena Van Brabant says
It's in the oven now, hoping it turned out. I wasn't able to get all the dry ingredients incorporated into the wet. I had to leave about 1/2cup out of the very thick doughlike batter. I reduced the sugar by half, and maybe that caused it. I felt it would be too sweet for our taste, so made that adjustment. I weighed my ingredients by grams.
Kim says
Yes, reducing the sugar is exactly what caused the very thick batter. Sugar is not only used for sweetness, but also for softness and overall a better texture. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs moisture. It is actually considered a liquid ingredient by most baking standards. If you remove 1/2 of it and don't replace it with something of the same baking quality, you will end up with the results you got.
Siena Van Brabant says
Thank you, Kim. It turned out really well. I think I might add a quarter cup more sugar next time, but the taste and texture are perfect. Thank you for the great recipe. My husband, who shudders every time I mention GF, really enjoyed this recipe too. I didn't warn him beforehand. LOL
Patricia says
I made this stelar cake yesterday, my teenagers couldn’t stop eating it mentioning “ mom it’s the first time in 12 yeasr a gluten-free cake taste and looks like a regular cake” so true!
Thank you Kim, for this wonderful recipe!
Mary Ann Prehn says
Great flavor! The house smelled soooo fragrant!! I chose to bake this in 3 small loaf pans so I could freeze it more easily. It is delicious, but I can only give it a 4 star rating as the center of the cake fell. Which I absolutely did not expect it to do. I was VERY careful in weighing out my flour blend, using all fresh ingredients. I thought I followed the recipe to perfection, too. Am I doing something wrong?
Kim says
I'm guessing that baking it in three small loaf pans is what caused it to not bake properly as this is meant to be baked in a Bundt pan. I'm not saying it won't work in loaf pans, but if you change how the recipe is written, there most likely will need to be some experimenting in finding the best temperature and time to bake them. My guess is that they weren't baked long enough, but again, without experimenting myself using loaf pans, I really can't say for sure. My suggestion next time is to pour all the batter in the loaf pans, but only bake one at first to see exactly how long it takes before baking the other two. However, as this is meant to be baked in a Bundt pan, I'm honestly not sure if it will even work in a loaf pan. I don't see why it wouldn't, but you never know until you experiment.
Andrea Angerame says
Kim
I made the apple cake and no one even knew it was gluten free. It was such a hit. But I wanted to know if I could make muffins and how would I adust the cooking time and any other changes that need to be made.
Thanks
Kim says
Thank you, Andrea! So glad you liked it!!
I would start with checking them at 20-25 minutes and then every 2-3 minutes after that 🙂
Tabitha C. says
I've got this in the oven now and can't wait to try it! FYI, you don't mention in the instructions when to put in the vanilla. I almost left it out but then realized it was missing and added it in with the apples! 😉