Tangy and full of puckery lime flavor enhanced by the white chocolate. This easy recipe is one of my favorite desserts to take to potlucks and church suppers.
Save this recipe by clicking on the ❤️ heart on the right-hand side of the screen or in the recipe card.
Table of Contents
🗝️ Key takeaways
- This easy white chocolate key lime bundt cake recipe has the perfect balance of sweet and tangy flavor and is even better the next day!
- Serve this beautiful cake on Easter, at showers, or at family gatherings any time of year.
- Be sure to grease and flour every nook and cranny of your bundt pan, so the cake doesn’t stick.
You’ll be obsessed with this key lime pie bundt cake recipe if you're a die-hard lime fan like me!
The pleasing tartness of key lime flavor is a tropical delight for your taste buds that blends perfectly with sweet ‘n silky white chocolate.
Like it even tangier? Try this margarita pound cake with tequila lime glaze!
🧾 Ingredients
This is an overview of the ingredients. You'll find the full measurements and instructions in the green recipe card (printable) at the bottom of the page.
📖 Variations
- My original recipe uses unsalted butter, but you can use salted butter if you’d like. Just leave out the pinch of salt.
- Substitute the granulated sugar with light brown sugar to add a slight caramel flavor to your cake.
- Key limes are crucial to the flavor profile of this delicious cake. But if you can’t find them at local grocery stores, regular limes and key lime juice will do in a pinch.
- Can't find key lime juice? Use regular lime juice.
- For an ultra-rich bundt cake, replace the key lime glaze with key lime-flavored cream cheese frosting. Just add key lime zest and juice to my whipped cream cheese frosting recipe.
- Add green gel food coloring to the cake batter and you have the perfect dessert for St. Patrick’s Day!
🔪 Instructions
This is an overview of the instructions. Full instructions are in the green recipe card at the bottom of the page. Click on the image to see it full size.
Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time at medium speed.
Mix in the key lime zest and vanilla extract.
Melt chocolate chips in a separate large bowl. Beat into butter mixture.
On low speed, add a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture.
Alternate the dry ingredients with the mixture of buttermilk and ⅓ cup of key lime juice.
Pour batter into the prepared bundt cake pan and bake in a 350-degree oven for 45-50 minutes.
Whisk the powdered sugar with 3 tablespoons of key lime juice in a medium bowl.
Spoon the key lime glaze over the cooled cake.
🍴 Equipment
- Mixing bowls
- Bundt cake pan
- Handheld mixer or stand mixer
🥫 How to store leftovers
Let your bundt cake cool down before storing it. Keep leftover cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to five days.
You can wrap individual slices in plastic wrap then aluminum foil, and freeze them in a freezer bag or airtight container for up to three months.
Thaw frozen cake in the fridge overnight. Enjoy cold or let it come to room temperature—if you can muster the patience!
Expert tip:
Key limes are only available certain times of year, if at all. You can use bottled key lime juice and regular lime zest - it will be fine.
💭 Things to know
- Use room-temperature butter, eggs, and buttermilk. This helps you cream the butter properly and prevents the eggs/buttermilk from curdling.
- You need either a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or an electric hand mixer to blend the ingredients.
- Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl often, especially after adding each egg.
- Let the melted white chocolate cool for a few minutes before adding it to the butter mixture. Hot melted chocolate could curdle the eggs!
- Reduce your mixer to low speed when alternating the flour and buttermilk mixtures. Overmixing the batter will make key lime cake tough and dry.
- Make sure you thoroughly grease and flour your bundt pan before pouring in the batter so the cake doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan.
- After you pour the batter into your bundt pan, firmly tap the pan on the counter several times to help release any trapped air bubbles.
- Your cake is done baking when a toothpick or wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Let the cake rest for 10 minutes in the bundt pan before turning it upside down on a wire rack to cool completely. Use a silicone spatula or butter knife to gently separate the sides of the cake from the pan.
- Sprinkle your delicious bundt cake with extra lime zest, or top it with thin slices of key limes for decoration. You can even garnish with graham cracker crumbs for a nod to key lime pie!
👩🍳 FAQs
Key limes are grown in the Florida Keys, a chain of islands off the southern coast of Florida. They’re smaller, rounder, and lighter in color than regular Persian limes.
While regular limes are tangy, slightly bitter, and acidic, key limes have a unique combination of tartness, sweetness, and bitterness.
Sure thing! It can be hard to find key limes most of the year. Your local grocery or Amazon have bottled key lime juice that's delish!
I don’t recommend it unless you're really in a pinch. Sour cream is less acidic, thicker, and tangier than buttermilk, so it can change the texture and flavor of your cake.
It depends on the capacity of the bundt pan and mini bundt pans. If you use a standard-size bundt pan with a 10-cup capacity and mini bundt pans, each with a 1-cup capacity, you can split the batter into about 10 mini bundt cakes. You’ll need to reduce the baking time to 20-35 minutes.
Yep! Once your cake has cooled completely, wrap it in a layer of plastic wrap and then foil and freeze it in a freezer bag or airtight container for 2-3 months.
Thaw frozen cake in the fridge overnight. Thawing the cake at room temperature creates condensation that can affect the texture of the cake. I recommend waiting to glaze the cake until just before serving.
📚 Related recipes
- Lime lovers are typically lemon lovers too, so try my old-fashioned Lemon Pudding Bundt Cake—it's rich, dense, and moist with a tart lemon glaze.
- Dense, moist, and velvety thanks to cream cheese and sour cream, Strawberry Pound Cake is one of my favorite summer bundt cakes!
- If you’re craving a traditional pound cake recipe, then my Buttermilk Pound Cake is the perfect cake for you—the tangy vanilla flavor and luscious brown butter glaze are simply delicious!
- Y'all - we can't get enough of this ruby red grapefruit bundt cake! Moist, sweet, tangy - it's got it all!
🍽️ Serve with...
Complement dessert with a coordinating meal. Succulent Grilled Shrimp Creole is served over a zesty creole sauce made with tomatoes, peppers, onion, garlic, and spices!
Caramelized Brazilian Grilled Pineapple with Sugar and Cinnamon pairs perfectly with spicy shrimp and this tangy, sweet cake.
Amp up the key lime flavor in this bundt cake with a glass of creamy Key Lime Pie Margarita on the side! So fun and so delicious.
📞 The last word
This cake tastes the best, as far as I'm concerned, sometime around March first when I am so tired of winter and heavy winter flavors that I could just scream.
The fresh, tangy citrus immediately wakes up my tastebuds and encourages me that Spring is really on its way. That doesn't mean it's not good the rest of the year!
Perfect for Easter, Mother's Day, and all your summer parties!
If you click on the number of servings in the recipe card you can adjust the measurements up or down for the exact number of servings you need.
If you love this recipe please comment below and give it 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Recipe
White Chocolate Key Lime Bundt Cake
Print Pin Recipe Save Recipe Rate RecipeIngredients
- 1 cup butter, room temp.
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- 2 tsps. vanilla
- 3 eggs, room temp
- 2 tbs lime zest, grated
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch salt
- 1 cup buttermilk, not low fat
- ⅓ cup key lime juice, if you can't find it you can use regular lime juice.
- 1 ¼ cups white chocolate chips
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons key lime juice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- Grease and flour a bundt pan.
- Beat the butter and then slowly add the sugar.
- Cream until light and fluffy.
- Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
- Add vanilla and lime zest.
- Melt the white chocolate chips.
- Beat in to the butter mixture.
- Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Mix the ⅓ cup lime juice with the buttermilk.
- Add the flour to the butter in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk.
- Mix until blended.
- Spoon into prepared pans and bake 45-50 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted halfway between the pan center and the outside reads 200℉.
- Let cool 10 minutes and carefully turn out of pan.
- Add the remaining lime juice to the powdered sugar to make a glaze.
- Spoon it over the warm cake.
- Add more glaze when the cake cools.
Notes
- Key limes are only available certain times of year, if at all. You can use bottled key lime juice (available on Amazon) and regular lime zest - it will be fine.
- Important! Use room-temperature butter, eggs, and buttermilk.
- Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl often, especially after adding each egg.
- Let the melted white chocolate cool for a few minutes before adding it to the butter mixture. Hot melted chocolate could curdle the eggs!
- Reduce your mixer to low speed when alternating the flour and buttermilk mixtures. Overmixing the batter will make key lime cake tough and dry.
- Make sure you thoroughly grease and flour your bundt pan before pouring in the batter so the cake doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan. A no-stick baking spray works best with fancy bundt cake pans.
- After you pour the batter into your bundt pan, firmly tap the pan on the counter several times to help release any trapped air bubbles.
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
This recipe has been tested several times. If you choose to use other ingredients, or change the technique in some way, the results may not be the same.
First published May 18, 2011. Last updated February 27, 2024 for better images and information.
✍🏻 A note from Marye...
I know y'all don't always like the stories bloggers tell so when I have one I try to put it at the very bottom so you can read or skip as you like.
I have loved white chocolate since I first bit the head off my first white chocolate Easter lamb way back in the 1960s. The creamy richness is like nothing else when done right...and like nothing else when done wrong. There is nothing worse than badly done white chocolate.
One of the reasons I like it with lime so well is that the two flavors balance perfectly; tangy lime and silky white chocolate. When you have two completely different areas of your tongue being massaged by complimenting flavor molecules it produces mouth magic.
No, really.
This particular cake is a favorite because it is moist and delicious AND easy. If you have time make it a day ahead because the flavors will mellow out overnight to exquisite perfection. If you don't have time to let it sit (well covered) until cool, then go ahead and eat it anyway.. it is still amazing.
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