I was craving cheese-y desserts the other day. Instead of making a cheesecake, which I had made many times in the past, I decided that I should perhaps try something new. So I found a cream cheese pound cake recipe from smitten kitchen, and adapted it a little bit by giving it a little kick. And the little "kick" was bourbon.
I like bourbon based drinks, like the Old Fashioned. In fact, I was drinking a glass of Old Fashioned when I was contemplating my baking "endeavor". So after going over the original recipe, I thought: why can't I put some bourbon in this cake to give it some extra flavor?
So below is the modified recipe. Every ingredient is 2/3 of what the original recipe called for except for almond extract, sugar and cream cheese. I halved the sugar and almond extract and used the same amount of cream cheese as the original recipe (I love cheese :-) ).
Serves: roughly 6
Ingredients:
1). 2 sticks (1 cup) of unsalted butter at room temp;
2). 1 package (8 ounces) again, at room temp (per Smitten Kitchen's recommendation, I used the Philadelphia brand cream cheese);
3). 1.5 cups of sugar;
4). 4 large eggs;
5). 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract;
6). 1/4 teaspoon almond extract;
7). 2 cups of all purpose flour;
8). 2/3 teaspoon of salt;
* * * *
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly butter a 10-inch bundt pan, and simply butter and flour it.
2. Beat the butter and cream cheese with a mixer in a large bowl.
3. Add the sugar, and beat until the mix becomes light and air.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time while beating the mix,
5. Add the vanilla and almond extracts.
6. Add the flour and salt all at once and beat until everything is incorporated.
7. Pour the batter into the bundt pan, shake the pan lightly to even out the top.
8. Bake until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean, 1 1/4 hours.
(I am not an experienced baker at all. So I am not sure if pound cakes in general tend to crack on the top. But mine did as you can see in the photo below)
Now at this point, you may wonder, where is the bourdon? Well, so the next few steps will be how to incorporate bourbon into the cake.
While waiting for the cake to cool down, which is still in the pan, do the following:
9. Melt half a stick of butter in a sauce pan on medium low heat;
10. Pour 1/4 cup of sugar and mix it well with the melted butter until sugar is disolved in the butter;
11. Add 2/3 cup of bourbon and stir the mix frequently, for 2-3 minutes.
12. Remove the sauce pan from the stove and leave it to cool down, for 20 minutes.
13. Then, pour the bourbon sauce onto the cake (which is still in the bundt pan). Let the sauce soak into the cake, which takes probably an hour and half.
14. Then remove the cake.
Strawberry coulis (optional)
(I didn't strictly follow the original recipe on this.)
Ingredients:
1). 1 cup of frozen strawberries (the original recipe uses fresh strawberries)
2). 1/4 cup of water;
3). 2 tablespoons of sugar;
4). 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice;
First defrost the strawberries. Then combine the ingredients listed above and purée the mix until very smooth, I did not strain the mix to remove the seeds because I was too lazy I didn't mind the seeds.
So, here you go, a delicious bourbon cream cheese pound cake. It was a lot of fun to bake it. One confession I have to make, though, is that I have never been much of a baker. I've always enjoyed cooking more because to me, baking seemed more like chemistry and does not allow the degree of improvisation that cooking allows (Yes, I am an improviser when it comes to cooking). But I've decided to bake more because I've started to enjoy it more, and honestly, home-baked desserts are more to my taste than most store/restaurant-bought overly sweet desserts. So expect more posts about baking from me!
