Cream Cheese Pound Cake by Southern Living ~~~Tweaked~~~
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Source: Southern Living, November 1995
This is my favorite pound cake!
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) Butter – softened
1 (8 ounce) package Cream cheese -- softened
3 cups Sugar
6 large Eggs
1 tablespoon Vanilla extract
3 cups (14 ounces) All-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon Salt
Beat the butter and cream cheese on medium speed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes or until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating 5 to 7 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating just until yellow disappears. Add vanilla mixing well.
Combine flour and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating at low speed just until blended after each addition. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch tube pan.
Fill a 2-cup, ovenproof measuring cup with water; place in oven with tube pan.
Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 to 15 minutes; remove from pan, and cool completely on a wire rack.
Variation…1/2 chocolate 1/2 vanilla
1/2 cup Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa
4 tablespoons heavy cream (I keep it for my coffee, you could probably sub canned milk)
1 cup chopped pecans
Add ingredients to half of the batter and stir well. I weighed the batter and 2 pounds would be half. Put the plain batter in the pan first and top with the chocolate batter and bake as above.
I could devour a large piece right now!
This Bundt cake looks absolutely delicious - can't wait to try the recipe.
But two questions first:
• In all my years of baking Bundt cakes I've never seen an instruction to bake the cake using a steam tray. How does it improve the cake?
• Do you bake the cake using a cold start or do you preheat the oven?
Thanks for any clarification you can provide!