Foodie Friday -- Cream Cheese Pound Cake

For those of you who dabble in social media, you might have seen me post this picture last Friday.

The point of this picture is to show you that boo-boos happen to the best bakers, but most of them can't laugh at themselves enough to post it on social media.

I have no problem embarrassing myself.

But after I took the cake out, let it cool and popped it out of the pan. It looked like this. Purty, huh?

Let's just say that the cleanup took a bit longer than expected since I had to clean the oven racks, the bottom of the oven, the counters I managed to get crumby, but Maggie (the dog) took care of the crumbs on the floor.

Though this is a simple recipe with few ingredients, I will warn you that it is extremely TIME intensive--from the 10 minutes required to cream the butter and sugar together to baking it in a cold oven and increasing the temp every 20 minutes until it bakes for an hour.

So if you have a couple hours to spare then this is a fabulous recipe! I'm sorry, but I have no idea where I found this recipe. It might be Bon Appetit, but I could be wrong. Sorry!

*Before you even start, if you don't want your cake to look like the first picture make sure that your Bundt pan is a 12-cup one! I didn't measure my fancy-schmancy pan and look what happened!*

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups sugar
1 tsp. salt
6 large eggs, room temperature
4 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups sifted all purpose flour

Butter and flour 12-cup Bundt pan. Using electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese in large bowl until fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add sugar and salt; beat 10 minutes, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Beat in flour at low speed until batter is smooth (do not overbeat). Transfer batter to pan.

Place pan in cold oven. Set temperature at 200 degrees F; bake 20 minutes. Increase temperature to 250 degrees F; bake 20 minutes. Increase temperature to 275 degrees F; bake 10 minutes. Increase temperature to 300 degrees F, bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour longer. Cool cake on rack 15 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack; cool completely.

Can be made 3 days ahead. Wrap in plastic and store at room temperature.

Tips & Tricks: 

• When it says room temperature, it means room temperature. If you plan to make this in the morning, then set the ingredients on the counter before you go to bed. 
• You know my feelings about fat free or 1/3 less fat or off brand cream cheese--don't cheat! Use the real stuff. It's not you'll be eating the whole thing alone. This is called a "special occasion cake". Don't mess with a good thing.
• Oops, I forgot to sift the flour. Cake turned out great! I used Gold Medal flour if that helps your decision to sift, or not to sift, . . . plus there's less flour all over the place if you don't sift. 
• If you don't have a standing mixer, be prepared to hold the mixer for 4 minutes, 10 minutes and then when you add an egg at a time, and then when you add the flour in small increment...unless you want to see the flour fly all over the kitchen. By any standards, that's a freaking long time!
• I used butter flavored spray to coat the Bundt pan before flouring.
• If the batter fills the pan more than 1/2 to 2/3 full, you might have the same problem I did. Set the pan on a large cookie sheet so you only have one messy pan to clean up instead of the oven. Just saying. 
• Though my Bundt pan is non-stick and I butter and floured it, the overflow made it stick a little around the top edge and it didn't immediately release. . . so I cut away the overflow and beat on the pan with a wooden spoon to encourage the cake to release. 

We had company and enjoyed the cake with berries mixed with a little Grand Marnier. It was yummy!

Enjoy!
Later, Peeps!