Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Pound Cake and coffee
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?
Butter and Lemon Zest
I creamed together the butter, cream cheese and zest, until it was nice and smooth.
Creaming together butter, cream cheese and lemon zest
I then added sugar, eggs, vanilla, and flour.
Pound Cake batter
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.
Pre Oven Pound 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.
Pound Cake, fresh out of the oven
It was halfway gone within minutes.
Pound Cake, half eaten
Even though I took it out a tad too early, no one seemed to mind.
Very dense pound cake, with lots of crumbles
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.
Pound Cake, extreme close up
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?

2 comments:

bansheemoni said...

You live near the Oinkster?! LUUUCKY...We love that place! The Ube shakes are the best!

Susannah said...

That looks AMAZING. I'm going to try it. Do you think it was too sweet for a glaze?
PS, I love your blog if you couldn't tell. Not just because I just got married, too, but I think you are so cute and I love your ideas!
www.uvinyl.blogspot.com