cream cheese and white chocolate chip pound cake.

Hello blog! Hello world! I can't believe that I have not updated this space in two weeks. In fact, I'm so excited to finally have something to share that I'm typing this out without having even tried the cake yet. (The cake's still baking.) Yeah so you can assume that by the time I get to the part where I talk about the cake, I would have typed that paragraph out at a later time when I've actually tasted the cake and I'm not just bullshitting my way through. Ohmigod I'm just so happy to blog that I'm about to go in a bout of verbal diarrhea. Or I'm already experiencing verbal diarrhea. Whatev. Can you tell? You can, can't you?

Okay, I need to calm down and walk away and wait for my cake to be done so that I can tell you all about it.

Walking away.

And I'm back (1.5 hours later).

This cake is dense like a pound cake should be but its not terribly so. The cream cheese definitely adds a little something to an otherwise pedestrian butter cake. You can taste the slight tanginess and it could have been more prominent if not for the lemon and almond extracts. If I ever make this again, I would keep just the vanilla extract for additional flavouring to see how much the cream cheese stands out.

I cut down the sugar because I planned to add white chocolate chips but my advice is to lower the sugar anyway even if you're not going to add the white chocolate. At 3/4 the original sugar level, the cake was just right in terms of sweetness so I would definitely think that if you were to follow the original recipe, you'll be risking an extreme sugar high.

Gargh the pictures turned out real bad because I was working with inadequate sunlight. Oh forgive me.

Cream Cheese and White Chocolate Chip Pound Cake
adapted from Baking by Flavour
makes a 10 inch tube cake

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cake flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I omitted- couldn't find my nutmeg!)
1 cup butter
3 tbsp shortening (I replaced with butter)
1 cup cream cheese
3 cups vanilla sugar (I say use 2 1/4 cups)
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp almond extract
6 large eggs
1 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325F. Prepare a 10 inch tube pan.

Sift the all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg together.

Cream the butter, shortening and cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Blend in the vanilla, lemon and almond extracts. Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure each is incorporated before adding the next. Stir in the flour mixture in 3 additions, blending until just incorporated. Stir in the white chocolate chips.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 25 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out mostly clean. Cool cake in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before unmolding. Let it cool completely before slicing.