Chocolate pound cake

Last weekend, I made a chocolate pound cake for Ramy's birthday (I told you, he wants it low-key). So I tried out Paula Deen's recipe. It was a hit! He wanted no icing or glaze. I topped mine with some fresh whipped cream, and it was great. I think adding a simple white glaze would have made it prettier and would have been a nice addition.

Here's the recipe:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
3 cups cugar
6 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup cocoa (I used dutch processed)

Preheat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.

Cream together butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Add eggs, two at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and cocoa. Add half of flour mixture to cream mixture, beat until incorporated. Add remaining half of flour mixture and beat until fully incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, 15 minutes. Bake for an additional 15 minutes if necessary, but do not open oven door to check cake for at least one hour into baking time.

A couple of my tips:
1) For this and other pound cakes, I like to use the Pam Baking spray. It stays a little stickier than if I grease with Crisco and flour on my own. So after I've sprayed the pan, I sprinkle granulated sugar all over the pan before pouring in the batter. It makes the crust on the outer edge of the cake extra crunchy and delectable.

2) Have you ever made a pound cake and cut into it and saw a spot in the middle of the cake that looked still wet, like it wasn't really done? That's probably not the case. That usually happens when the butter (and cream cheese) and sugar haven't been creamed long enough. I cream the butter and sugar (and cream cheese, if in the recipe) on high in my Kitchen Aid mixer for 4-5 minutes. It makes for a fluffier batter without that dense center.


I also made a chicken and wild rice casserole for dinner this week. Some of the rice still ended up being crunchy, despite the fact that I had actually combined all the ingredients and it had been sitting in the fridge all day before I baked it. So there should certainly have been plenty of time for the rice to absorb the liquid. C'est la vie. Ramy suggested (very kindly) that next time I should cook the rice in the rice cooker separately and then just bake the chicken and pour the sauce over both.