A very dear friend of mine was invited over for dinner by her male friend one evening. She was promised something enticing and out of the ordinary-not the usual take-away, nor reinvented left overs!
She arrived punctual and famished as any seductee ought to and was greeted with the delightful aroma of cake baking. Perplexed, she asked, “Did you bake a cake for dinner?” “Yes”, he replied. And so it was pound cake for dinner. Love it!
Was there ever a time you had a meal that was the result of creative, “out-of-the- box” thinking?
Raspberry Pound Cake
This recipe is a variation of the original Raspberry Pound Cake recipe which came with this story. The yummy cake recipe goes like this:
Strawberry Pound Cake
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel (from unwaxed fruit)
- 3 eggs (room temperature)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup sour cream (room temperature)
- 8 oz. of either fresh raspberries, blueberries, or strawberries (don’t mix berries)
- powdered (confectioner’s) sugar for dusting
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- Butter and flour a loaf pan.
- In a bowl, mix together the butter and sugar at high speed until it is a creamy soft mixture, about 4-5 minutes, scraping down the bowl as necessary. Add the eggs, one at a time until light and fluffy, then add the vanilla and lemon zest.
- Mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Alternate adding portions of this and the sour cream to the butter and egg mixture until everything is combined. Be careful not to over-beat the batter. Stop mixing when each addition is well incorporated.
- Pour a 1/3 of the mixture into the pan. place the fruit on top. Pour another 1/3 of the batter on top of the fruit and repeat with the rest of the fruit and batter-this way, I find that the fruit is spread more throughout the cake. Smooth the batter with a spatula.
- Bake until a cake tester (or wooden toothpick) inserted into the middle comes out dry and clean, about 1 hour.
- Remove cake from oven and cool on a wire rack.
- Run a knife around the edges of the cake pan to loosen the cake and slide unto a plate.
- Dust lightly with confectioner’s sugar once completely cooled.