Cream Cheese Pound Cake

I make pound cake wayyy too much... it's just so easy and there's something awesome about creaming together massive amounts of butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Especially after getting my absolutely fantastic Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas... seriously, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with it. I used to think that maybe they weren't THAT great, and then I got one. Probably one of the best things ever. I just left the cream cheese, butter, and sugar in the mixer to cream while I made dinner. Aaaaamazing.
But I'll stop talking about my mad crazy love for my mixer and tell you about this recipe. Totally and completely delicious, and very easy. One of my sister's says it tastes like cheesecake with a different texture. Anything even slightly cheesecake-y and I'm pretty sure its a great idea.
If you're not a huge fan of cream cheese pound cake, this is a wonderful recipe for normal pound cake, and also one that I use on a regular basis.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Adapted from My Baking Addiction
Makes one bundt cake

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 325, grease a bundt cake pan. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, beat together butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add in sugar and beat until light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. Add in eggs two at a time and beat to incorporate. Beat in vanilla.
Add flour and mix until fully combined.
Pour into bundt pan and bake about an hour, rotating pan once.
Let cool in pan for about 20 minutes before removing to cool on wire rack completely.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Pumpkin is most definitely one of my favorite flavors. I love the spices that go along with it, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice... yuuuum. SO good :) Most of the time when I bake with pumpkin I make into muffins or a quick bread loaf and try to convince myself it's healthy, but occasionally I will give up the attempts at healthy-ness. These are the times I make pumpkin into cupcakes with obsene amounts of frosting. Like, seriously, the amount of frosting on these cupcakes is ridiculous. There is a reason, though; I have an issue with unfilled cupcakes. For the longest time I couldn't stand cupcakes because the frosting just wasn't evenly distrubited enough. Not to mention, grocery store bakery cupcakes are generally disgusting, but that's besides the point. Once I started filling cupcakes with icing, I couldn't stop. It's the perfect solution, it's not much more work and it's much better for icing distribution. I try not to pile too much frosting on top, as it's generally really rich, but it usually ends up with a giant pile of frosting anyway.
These cupcakes are fantastic. I always think of pumpkin baked goods as dense, which isn't such a bad thing all the time, but these are wonderfully fluffy and still very moist. The frosting is my own recipe and I still need to work out a few kinks before posting it, but just a basic cream cheese recipe will work. I frosted mine with a mascarpone/cream cheese frosting. Yuuum. Enjoy! :)


Pumpkin Cupcakes
Adapted from Brown Eyed Baker
2 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
2/4 cup canned pumpkin (not pie filling)

Preheat oven to 350 and line 23 muffin tins with liners.
Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. Set aside.
Beat together sugar and butter until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, beat until will combined. Beat in vanilla.
With mixer on low, beat in 1/3 flour mixer, mix until just combined. Add in half milk, then another third of flour, the rest of the milk, and then the rest of the flour. Beat in pumpkin until just incorporated. Fill muffin tins about half of the way full, bake 16-18 minutes until they spring back when touched. Let cool completely before frosting.
This is half of the original recipe. It was supposed to only make 16 but I filled mine a little less than the recipe said and got more. I prefered this, the still came up to the top of the paper liners when baked.
Frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting.

Yellow Cake with Whipped Frosting

Yesterday I decided that it was imperative that I made cake. I'm not sure why, but it was. I decided to make this cake from bakingbites.com. I didn't use the frosting recipe that comes with the cake recipe because my little sister isn't a huge fan of chocolate. How anyone can dislike chocolate is beyond me, but that's beside the point. I ended up making the first white frosting that I found on the All Recipes website. It was pretty decent, although very sweet. Most of my family liked it with the exception of my mother, but she isn't a big fan of dessert-type food anyway. I loved it. The frosting wasn't as aesthetically pleasing today, but it tasted the same as yesterday and it wasn't particularly pretty yesterday anyway. That has more to do with my poor frosting skills than the frosting itself :P
Next time I would definitely use a chocolate frosting. The cake itself is AWESOME. My favorite cake ever is yellow cake with chocolate frosting and I will definitely be making that combination soon with this recipe. Definitely my new go-to yellow cake recipe.
In case anyone wants it, this is the white frosting recipe.
I didn't have cake flour or buttermilk so I substituted about 1 tbs lemon juice in regular milk, and I didn't have any cake flour so I just used this instead. I sifted that flour probably 10 times.
Also, with the butter, I didn't beat it right away, I crumbled it in with my fingers first.
I have a convection oven and my cake cooked in about 33minutes at 350. Definitely check it early. I made this into two layers, but I think next time I'd double the recipe and make it 4 layer.

I apologize for my poor picture taking skills... I'm hoping they will progress over time, haha.

I also went to World Market (which is an AMAZING store), and got some spices. I got nutmeg (just because I needed it and knew I'd forget otherwise), candied ginger root, and lavender. No idea what I'll do with them yet, but I am going to be looking for recipes :) Very excited!

Coffee Cake

I make this almost every weekend and it gets eaten right away. Super yummy!


Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake
Adapted from Allrecipes.com

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour- I'm not exactly sure on this, I generally just add flour to the butter and cinnamon mixture until crumbs form.
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 8x8 inch pan.

Make the streusel topping: In a medium bowl, melt partially butter in microwave. Add brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour. If mixture is more of a paste than crumbles, add flour (a little at a time), until a crumb texture is reached. I generally use my hands when it gets closer to crumbs, I find it works best that way.

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon, set aside. In a large bowl stir egg, milk, vanilla extract, and milk. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, stir until just combined, and fold in sour cream.Pour half the batter into prepared pan, sprinkle half of the streusel mix over batter, pour the rest of the batter into the pan and top with the remaining streusel.

3.Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.


I apologize in advance if my directions aren't clear enough. The ones on the original recipe were rather bizarre.