Ah, Pound Cake.Hello my friend.
So simple. So delightful.

And so perfect for your upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

With all the fresh spring berries showing up in the market, much like the Strawberry Short Cakes from last week, Pound Cake serves as a fabulous medium from which to eat those berries.

I came across this recipe last weekend on Orangette, a blog from a fellow Seattlite whom I follow. It looked so good, I added it to my afternoon of baking. And I have to say, I’m just thrilled with how it turned out.

Can a cake be both dense and airy at the same time? Apparently it can. The cake has the denseness of a traditional pound cake, but somehow still tastes light on the tongue. It is sweet, though not overly so. And it has a nice tang from the cream cheese. This is an excellent vehicle for some fresh berries, peaches, or ice cream. And if you are looking for something simpler, toasted with some butter, it makes a pretty awesome breakfast.

The thing that I am possibly most excited about though is that this recipe makes two cakes, if done in regular loaf pans. According to Orangette, she froze one of the cakes and found that once defrosted, the frozen one was even better than the fresh one! So, I’m excited that I now have a spare pound cake in my freezer, waiting for one of those magical evenings when you find a bunch of people in your house that you didn’t expect and need to feed.

And by people, I mean friends in your house. I don’t think I’d feed pound cake to intruders or anything.

That’d be weird.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Adapted from Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott, shared from Orangette.

Ingredients: 

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon fine salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

One 8-ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans. (I also lined my pans with parchment, because it makes the cakes so easy to remove.)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and cream cheese, and beat on medium speed until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar, and continue to beat for about 2 minutes more, stopping once to scrape down the sides. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low, and add the flour mixture in three doses, beating only until the flour is absorbed and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan or pans.

Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes (for a tube pan) or 55 to 60 minutes (for loaf pans), or until the cake is golden brown, pulling away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire rack, and cool completely before loosening the sides with a thin knife and removing the cake from the pan.