Baking with Blobby

Raspberry might be the best tasting fruit.  Fight me on this. 

Whether it be the NYT app, IG or Facebook, they can only show me a certain recipe so many times before I cave and make it. I mean, assuming it's somewhat appealing and in my taste palate. 

For the past few weeks, it's been a Cream Cheese Pound Cake. 

Everything about that name is borderline NC-17. Or something one might watch a quarter / token at a time. 

I cast no dispersions on this. 

What they leave out of the title is 'Raspberry'.  To be fair, anything other than the pound cake in their recipe is "optional".  It wasn't for me. It was the raspberry that drew me to the thing in the first place. 

Apparently, finding a homemade recipe for pound cake that replicates one like Sara Lee is a difficulty. I'm not sure I've ever had any Sara Lee pound cake, so I have no frame of reference, nor have I ever made a pound cake - at least I don't think. How hard can it be? 

Let's find out. 

Just a note: I cut everything in half (though you can't cut 5 eggs in half, so I used 3). And I used an 8x8 pan. The recipe below is for a larger cake. 

Ingredients 

Yield: One 9-by-13-inch cake 

For the Cake 

2½ cups/320 grams all-purpose flour 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1½c ups/345 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature 

8 ounces/226 grams cream cheese, at room temperature 

3 cups/600 grams granulated sugar 

1 tablespoon vanilla extract 

1¼ teaspoons fine sea salt 

5 large eggs, at room temperature 

For the Assembly (optional) 

1 cup/305 grams raspberry preserves (see Tip) 

2 cups/473 milliliters cold heavy whipping cream 

2 tablespoons granulated sugar 

½ teaspoon fine sea salt 

1½ cups/34 grams freeze-dried raspberries 

Preparation 

Step 1 Prepare the cake: Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 325 degrees. 

Step 2 In a medium bowl, add the flour and baking powder. Whisk to combine and to break up any lumps. 

Step 3 Add the butter to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Use the empty butter wrappers to generously grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan; line the bottom and long sides with parchment. Add the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and salt to the bowl with the butter and mix on medium-low speed to combine. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until fluffy, almost white and the sugar is mostly dissolved, 5 to 7 minutes. 

With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, mixing until smooth after each addition. Use a flexible spatula to scrape the bowl, then beat over medium speed for another minute. 

Step 4 With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until most of the flour streaks have disappeared. Using the spatula, scrape the bowl and gently stir until you eliminate the flour streaks. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan (I forgot that picture), then smooth out the top. 

Step 5 Bake, rotating the pan halfway through, until golden brown and a skewer or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 60 to 65 minutes. When you gently press on the center of the cake with your fingertip, you shouldn’t leave a dent. Let cool completely in the pan. (The cooled cake can be covered and kept at room temperature for up to 3 or 4 days.) 

Even though I cut the ingredients in half, the 8 x 8 is a "taller" cake than the 9 x 13. While it didn't take 60 minutes, it took about 52. Just watch that should you not do the full recipe. 

Step 6 If you’re preparing the optional toppings, assemble the cake: Spread the preserves evenly over the cooled cake. 

Here, it looks like a large half of a PBJ. I did mix the preserves in a bowl with some lemon juice (see Tip below). 

Step 7 In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the heavy whipping cream, sugar and salt over medium-high until billowy soft peaks form. When you lift the whisk out of the bowl and turn it upside-down, a peak of cream should flop over slightly like a Santa hat. 

I wasn't paying attention and over whipped. it was more than stiff peaks. I tried adding more cream, but it didn't really help. I could have started over, but I didn't wanna. 

 

Evenly spread the whipped cream over the jam-topped cake. 

It looks imperfect (and it is), but I can call it "rustic".  And hopefully the grated freeze-dried raspberries will cover it all. 

Step 8 Add the freeze-dried raspberries to a fine-mesh sieve and hold it over the cake. Using your fingers, pass them through until most of the magenta powder rests atop the frosting like fresh snow and most of the seeds are left behind in the sieve. The entire surface of the whipped cream should be covered in pink dust. Discard the raspberry seeds. Serve immediately. 

Here's where I should have read all the way through as opposed to doing it step by step. I used a mircoplane and not a sieve, which would have made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. So, mine wasn't like the pictures in the recipe 

What it's supposed to look like:

What it did look like:

Granted, the NYT has better lighting and photographers, but you can see how my grating of the freeze-dried raspberries was subpar. 

The cake was good, and 710 said it was like the Sara Lee stuff, so I guess that's a win. It tastes good, though with the preserves, I cannot tell if the freeze dried stuff adds anything. 

It was fairly easy to make and can see doing it for a party or potluck kind of thing. 

Tip 

Look for a brand of raspberry preserves with minimal ingredients: They should consist of only raspberries, sugar, pectin and some kind of citrus. That will taste more tart and less artificial than one with, say, high-fructose corn syrup and other fruit juices that muddy the natural raspberry flavor. If your preserves taste especially sweet, you can stir in up to 3 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice for added tartness.