Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake

We haven't had many guests over since we've moved in. While we thought we'd have plenty of time after all of the wedding madness, we really haven't had much time to organize our new home. But, have you ever noticed that when you invite guests over, sometimes that's all it takes to get the place in order? This past weekend, we decided to put it to the test. We invited Brian's family over and got super busy with our cleaning. They really wanted to to have dinner at The Oinkster down the street, so I offered to make some coffee and dessert. I needed to make something with very little hands on-time, so I went with this recipe, for pound cake. Because I am so into my micro grater lately, I added some lemon zest and used reduced fat cream cheese. Of course, when you use 1.5 cups of butter... what difference does that really make?

I creamed together the butter, cream cheese and zest, until it was nice and smooth.

I then added sugar, eggs, vanilla, and flour.

I gotta say, the batter was fabulous. (I know, you're not supposed to taste batter with raw eggs...but...ehh... I can't help it.) The taste of this batter really took me back to being a little kid and tasting the batter of my grandma's Beerok (pronounced: b-row-ck). I couldn't find a thing about Beerok online, but it's this amazing Armenian/Russian pastry which I can only describe as pastry bars with apricot jam. I knew this was going to be a good cake.

What I didn't realize when i decided to use this recipe is the 80 minute baking time. I had to delay our dinner plans by about 20 minutes, in which we started to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox. With lots of hungry people in the living room waiting, I may have rushed the cake out of the oven a few minutes early, but it was still pretty good.

It was halfway gone within minutes.

Even though I took it out a tad too early, no one seemed to mind.

The cake itself was so rich and dense that it almost tasted creamy. The touch of lemon zest also really gave this cake a summary feel, perfect with some fresh fruit, or my homemade coconut ice cream.

Our bellies couldn't be fuller and our home is finally starting to come together. Family, food, and lots of lemon zest... what else can a girl ask for?