Cream Cheese Pound Cake

I need a pound cake. Not just to be a pound cake but because I have been taking cake decorating classes for 3 months now and I want to make petit fours for my final project this month. I could drag out the good old Duncan Hines box cake mix with a box of pudding (their pound cake recipe is a favorite of mine from childhood) but this is my final project, the one I want everyone to ooohhh and aaaahhhh over. I have to make one from scratch. It can't be over bearing or I won't want to eat a dozen of my creations when I'm all through. "Sugar Bitches" to the rescue. I've mentioned I love this cookbook before. One of my favorites.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

2 2/3 C. flour

1-8 oz. pkg. cream cheese

7 eggs separated

3 1/2 C. sugar

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. baking powder

1 1/4 C. butter, softened

2 t. butter extract

Notes: Have eggs at room temperature, they are much easier to separate and the whites will whip better at room temp. 

     Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan. I need a flat cake so I'm using a 9 x 13 pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Beat the egg whites until stiff. You want a peak to form when you lift your beater out.

Beat the butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. I creamed the butter and cream cheese and then added my sugar. Beat in egg yolks one at a time., beating well after each one.

 Beat in the butter extract, salt, baking powder and flour. Gently fold in the egg whites into the batter. Take your time on this, you want the egg whites to keep your batter fluffy. If you break the egg whites down during this process, you will have a flatter cake.

Pour into pan and bake for 1 hour. I baked my 9 x 13 cake for 35 minutes, checked it with a toothpick then cooked for another 10 minutes. Perfect. Serves 12.

The recipe doesn't mentioned cooling so I let my cake rest for 15 minutes then turned it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

In case you didn't know, you trim the edges off of a cake for petit fours. And that leaves cake "scraps"...and well, we wouldn't want anything to go to waste.....

And I just happened to have some homemade hot fudge sauce in the fridge....what's that old saying....
Waste not, want not? Wouldn't want anything to waste...