IKEA Came Out With a $10 Bundt Pan. But Does It Work?

Is the low price a bargain, or an unfortunate temptation? We had to find out.
Image may contain Mouse Electronics Hardware and Computer
Photo by Chelsea Kyle

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

We love to try new bakeware, but it can be expensive. So when we saw that IKEA had come out with a new cake pan that's not only super adorable (check out that fluted design, above!), but also only costs $10, we were intrigued.

Part of the brand’s Vardagen series of kitchen gear, this hyper-affordable, 10- to 12-cup cake pan comes with an interchangeable bottom, so it can be used as either a flat, regular cake pan or a fluted tube pan. (That’s right—it’s technically two pans in one.)

This isn’t IKEA's first foray into bakeware, but the Vardagen series is their first to forgo any coating, featuring tins that are molded of anodized aluminum, a process that strengthens the metal and creates a non-reactive surface that’s supposed to release more easily than other uncoated metal bakeware.

But again, the real draw here is the $10 price tag. (To compare, Nordic Ware’s standard bundt pan retails for around $36, and the tube pan from Fat Daddio's—a leading anodized aluminum manufacturer—is around $30.)

We couldn't help wondering: Would a $10 cake pan get the job done, or was this deal too good to be true?

We had to check it out.

The Test

On first inspection, the IKEA pan feels sturdy and certainly looks pretty, but we noticed that, at 11 1/4 inches in diameter, it's a lot wider than a standard cake pan, which usually ranges from 8 to 9 inches. When fitted with the tube insert, it's also shallower than a standard bundt or tube pan.

What does that mean? Cake batter poured into the Ikea pan won't be as deep—so you might have to decrease the cooking time.

To test it out, the Epi Test Kitchen used our Lemon-Buttermilk Bundt Cake recipe. They baked one cake in a standard bundt pan; one cake in a IKEA Vardagen cake pan with the tube insert, for the recommended baking time; and one cake in a IKEA Vardagen cake pan with the tube insert, just until the cake was done, which ended up being less than the recommended baking time.

The results of the experiment.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
The Results

The cake baked in the standard bundt pan came out with a richly dark, toothsome crust and a moist, melt-in-your-mouth crumb.

The IKEA cake baked for the full time came out with a lighter crust and, although dryer than the control cake, was still really good. (Without the side-by-side comparison, I might not have noticed that it was overbaked.)

Finally, the IKEA cake baked for a shorter amount of time—it was pulled 10 minutes shy of the suggested time—was also wonderfully moist, but had the lightest crust of all three cakes. (Why the lighter crust? Anodized aluminum is lighter in color than Epi's standard bundt pan, and lighter metal will result in a lighter-in-color crust, no matter the shape.)

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
So Should We Buy It?

If you use this pan, you'll need to rely on your senses more than usual to figure out when it's done: Does it smell baked? Does it look baked? Does it spring back when lightly touched in the center? (Also, use the toothpick test, as we did when determining when the third cake should be pulled.)

Bottom line: It's a sturdy pan and it cooks evenly. If you're willing to monitor your cakes during the last several minutes of baking, then the $10 price tag can't be beat.