Archive for: pound cake
Chocolate pound cake is not quite as common as vanilla pound cake. Vanilla pound cake has a delicate flavor, balancing the floral flavor of vanilla with the richness of butter. The taste is addicting, but it is subtle compared to other types of cake. Chocolate flavor, on the other hand, is not subtle and most of the time we want chocolate desserts to be very rich and dramatic. This Chocolate Pound Cake takes its cue from the classic vanilla cake. It has a very good chocolate flavor, but the texture of the cake is just as much the star of this dessert as the chocolate is.
The cake is very simple to make and gets its chocolate flavor from cocoa powder. I recommend using Dutch process cocoa powder in this recipe, which gives the cake a slightly deeper chocolate flavor. If you only have natural cocoa powder, there is no need to worry because the recipe will still work out, it will just have a very slightly different chocolate flavor to it. If you happen to have some chocolate extract in your pantry, this recipe is the perfect place to use it and you can add 1 tsp of chocolate extract in with the vanilla. My Vanilla Bean Pound Cake recipe is a classic pound cake recipe that doesn’t use any leavening agents, but since cocoa powder is much denser than flour is, the Chocolate Pound Cake needs a little bit of leavening to ensure that it is light and not too heavy feeling.
Once you’ve baked your cake, there is a lot you can do with it. It is good when sliced thick and served plain, with a cup of coffee on the side. You could top it with a scoop of whipped cream and some fresh fruit to dress it up a little bit. Strawberries and raspberries go very well with this cake. If you decide you want to boost the chocolate flavor up a few notches, make a quick ganache with dark chocolate and heavy cream and pour it over the top of the loaf before serving it.
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The original pound cake got its name from its ingredients. It contained a pound of eggs, a pound of butter, a pound of sugar and a pound of flour. It was a dense cake, but it had a tender texture that other cakes at the time lacked and it became popular enough that we still have pound cakes around today. There are lots of recipes for pound cakes out there, some adding additional ingredients and some cutting back on some of the original components, and many of them are good recipes. Sometimes, however, it pays to stick close to the original recipe and this one is pretty true to its roots.
This Vanilla Bean Pound Cake is a straightforward pound cake recipe, made with butter, eggs, flour and sugar. I added a little bit of salt to make the vanilla in the cake pop more and a little bit of milk, which prevents the finished cake from feeling too egg-y. As in traditional pound cakes, there is no leavening in this cake, so don’t be alarmed that there is no baking powder or baking soda on the ingredient list. The slight rise that this cake has comes mostly from the inclusion of the eggs in the cake batter. It has a very dense crumb but is so tender that it almost seems to melt in your mouth when you take a bite. It may not look fancy at first glance, but this is one of those cakes that I would choose over an over-frosted layer cake any day of the week!
The cake, although simple, feels very indulgent thanks to its buttery vanilla flavor. Since I used a whole vanilla bean in the cake, it is also loaded with specks of vanilla. This is one recipe where it is definitely worth splurging and using whole vanilla beans, scraping out the seeds and adding them to the batter. If you don’t have any, however, you can still get a good vanilla flavor into the cake by using 2 tsp of vanilla extract.
The cake is baked in a loaf pan and cut in slices to serve. It can be served plain, with a cup of tea or coffee, or it can be dressed up in a number of ways. For instance, you could turn it into the base of a strawberry shortcake and finish a slice with fresh berries and whipped cream. For summer entertaining, you can toast a slice on the grill to give it some extra texture and serve it with a big scoop of ice cream. The cake keeps well when it is stored in an airtight container and it can be baked a day or two before serving, if necessary. This also means that you can nibble away at your cake in small slices over the course of a week if you don’t have any plans to entertain or simply want to keep this cake all to yourself.
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Oreo has been releasing limited edition holiday cookies for some time now, and this year’s Candy Cane Oreos are proving to be a very popular addition to the lineup. The cookies feature the standard chocolate wafers found on most Oreos, but have a peppermint filling that is red, white and speckled with slightly crunchy candy cane bits. The peppermint isn’t too strong and it is balanced very well by the not-too-sweet chocolate wafers. They’re quite good (and even better if you’re an Oreo fan) and I was inspired to use them to put a holiday cookies n’ cream twist into some baked goods.
This Candy Cane Oreo Pound Cake uses limited edition Candy Cane Oreos to infuse a little peppermint and a little chocolate into a vanilla pound cake. The pound cake itself is moist and buttery, with a very tight crumb and a tender texture. It has a nice vanilla flavor that sets off the peppermint in the cookies – which are very coarsely chopped and added to the cake batter – very well. The batter is thick enough to hold the cookie pieces without them sinking to the bottom of the cake, so each slice has a great look to it with some black, some white and some red.
The peppermint flavor in this cake is a nice addition because it is subtle. This isn’t a peppermint cake, but you get just enough peppermint here and there to make it a good fit for the holidays! If you do want to boost the mint factor, you can either add some of your own chopped peppermint candies or a little peppermint extract to the cake batter. I used Candy Cane Oreos, but there are other mint sandwich cookies available that work well, too, such as the Peppermint Jo Jo’s from Trader Joe’s.
You can bake this cake in a bundt pan or a tube pan. I think that a tube pan will give you slightly better results, since tube pans don’t have intricate designs that the cookies might get stuck to when you are trying to turn out the cake. If you do opt for a bundt pan, be sure to grease and flour it before using to prevent any part of the cake from sticking.
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When it comes to baked goods, pumpkin tends to show up in pumpkin pie more often than it does in any other dessert. Even people who are huge pumpkin fans – as I am – have a hard time looking at a pumpkin or at a can of pumpkin puree and not thinking about pie. But pumpkin is a great, versatile ingredient to bake with and it can go well in many other types of baked goods, adding moisture and flavor wherever it is added.
This pumpkin pound cake is a great example of showcasing pumpkin in a non-pie dessert. The pound cake has a tight crumb and the rich, almost buttery texture to it that so many other pound cakes have. It is also very moist and very soft, thanks in part to the pumpkin puree that is incorporated into the batter. Both canned pumpkin puree and fresh pumpkin puree will work well in this recipe and will give the cake a nice, mild pumpkin flavor. I enhanced this by adding in some pumpkin pie spice (using a homemade blend) that includes ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cloves and freshly ground nutmeg.
I added a simple cream cheese glaze to the top of this cake for a little extra flavor and to brighten up the presentation. The cake is great on its own or with a dusting of powdered sugar on top if you want to keep things simple. You can also stir in some chocolate chips, candied ginger pieces or dried cranberries to make the cake even more interesting. It keeps well for a couple of days when well-wrapped or packed inside an airtight container.
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It’s nice to have a cake around the house. It’s nice to have something to slice and serve when the neighbors come over for coffee or when family drops in, but it’s equally nice to have a little something to treat yourself with when you’re at home and looking for a snack. I tend to think that a good, moist bundt cake or tube cake is the way to go, since they don’t need any frosting and often keep a little bit better than layer cakes do because they are much easier to wrap up with plastic wrap and keep fresh (no worries about squishing the icing!).
This cake is just that kind of everyday cake that you want around the kitchen. It’s a Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake that is moist, tender and – most importantly – very flavorful. The lemon in the cake and the lemon glaze keep the cake light and fresh tasting, perfect for an afternoon snack. Without the glaze, which has plenty of fresh lemon juice, the lemon flavor in the cake is fairly subtle. I baked this cake in a tube pan, the same type of pan that I would use for angel food cake. It is easy to get a cake out of this sort of pan, since the sides are removable, but my favorite thing about it is the fact that you still get to see the beautiful, high-rising top of the cake, with all it’s little nooks and crannies just waiting to be filled with a drizzle of icing.
When you’re mixing up this cake, don’t worry if the batter seems thing. Pound cake, although it is tender in the end, is dense compared to many other cakes and really requires a thick batter to achieve this texture. The butter in the cake lends a nice background flavor to it, but the vegetable oil that I added in is what helps keep it moist for several days after baking.
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