Simply J Life

I adapted this recipe from this Lime Cream Cheese Pound Cake recipe. The 10 cup Fleur-de-Lis cake bundt pan makes for a lovely presentation but the 12 cup bundt will hold all the batter. I used 3 sticks of butter instead of 2 1/4 sticks. I also doubled the amount of sugar and lemon juice for the glaze because I am a little heavy handed with my brush.

Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Ingredients:

For the Pound Cake:
3 1/4 cups cake flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3 sticks of unsalted butter
8 oz. cream cheese
3 cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. very finely grated lemon zest

For the Glaze:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

Garnish:
Confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Instructions:
Have all ingredients at room temperature. Position oven rack in lower third of oven and preheat to 325 degrees F (160 C). Grease and flour a 9 or 10-inch bundt pan or Fleur-de-Lis* cake pan.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt, set aside.

With an electric mixer, fitted with a flat beater, beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed until creamy and smooth, about 30-40 seconds. Add 3 cups of the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, stop mixer and scrape bowl occasionally. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and 3 tbsp. lemon juice (or regular fresh lemon juice). Reduce speed to low. Fold in flour, baking soda, and salt mixture in 3 additions, blending each addition just until smooth, stop mixer and scrape bowl occasionally. Fold in lemon zest.

Spoon batter into prepared pan, making sides higher than in center. Bake until cake is golden, and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 1/2 hours. Cool upright in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Invert cake onto cooling rack with waxed or parchment paper placed underneath rack, and glaze.

Makes 12-16 servings.

Lemon Glaze:

In a small bowl, whisk 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice and 1 1/2 cups sugar until blended. Set rack over a sheet of waxed paper, Generously brush cooled cake with glaze. After glaze has set; approximately 10 minutes, lightly sprinkle cake with confectioners’ sugar.

Notes
Nordic Ware’s Fleur-de-Lis cake pan can be purchased at Nordic Ware’s website at: http://www.nordicware.com.

I got the Edge Brownie Pan for Christmas. I have made Banana Heath Bar brownies twice and they turned out really well. Very moist and chewy brownies with lots of edges.. Baker’s Edge also makes a Simple Lasagna Pan which I may eventually purchase.

southernfood.about.com/od/poundcakes/r/blbb681.htm

This was my first cake of 2010. The cold oven pound cake gets its name because you do not preheat the oven as you normally would for most cakes. You combine our ingredients, poured them into a tube pan, place it in the oven, set the oven to 325 degrees, and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes. It turned out well but next time I will use room temperature eggs so the cake will rise better.

Just in time for the holidays. This recipe is really simple to prepare and the taste takes you back to your elementary school lunchroom.

www.j-notes.com/recipes/buttercookies.htm

Butter Cookies (the yummy lunchroom kind!!!)

2 sticks of butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup of plain flour

Cream butter and sugar together. Add flour a little a time. Form dough into small balls and flatten with a fork or by hand. Bake at 325º until lightly brown…. About 15-20 minutes. Recipe provided by my baking buddy, Billy.

Baking is one of my passions. I can make some desserts really well but my peach cobbler has never quite been to my liking. My dad made a much better cobbler. I think I first tried to make a peach cobbler when I was about 13 years old and try again every few years but have not mastered it yet.

I contacted my friend, pastry chef David Benton, to teach me how to make a really good peach cobbler. It turned out amazing and it was much less difficult than I expected. Everyone has a take on how to make peach cobbler but David made it look simple. I look forward to making a peach cobbler on my own very soon. I will definitely take photos when I do.

Please check out David’s baking at www.sugarsweetsf.com. Your taste buds will thank you!

Banana Bread & Strawberries, originally uploaded by in2jazz.

This week’s treat is very yummy banana bread. I decided to plate a few slices, garnish them with strawberries and take a few photos.

The banana bread recipe is adapted from the Fanny Farmer Pumpkin Bread recipe.

Banana Bread Recipe

1 1/2 cups (210g) flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup (200 g) sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (1/4 L) banana purée
1/2 cup (1 dL) canola or vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 dL) chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Sift together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda. Mash the bananas into a puree and be sure to leave it a little lumpy. Mix the banana, oil, eggs, 1/4 cup of water, honey, and cinnamon together, then combine with the dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Stir in the nuts (optional.) Pour into a well-buttered 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.

Topping

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Spread liberally over the banana bread dough before placing in the oven. The aroma will make you want to hurt someone!!! Bake 50-60 minutes until a thin skewer poked in the very center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out of the pan and let cool on a rack. Makes one loaf. Can easily double the recipe.

Thanks to Bakesale Betty for her guidance and mentoring on this yummy recipe.

Dessert Goodness #2, originally uploaded by in2jazz.

These are photos from the 4th Annual Festival of Desserts and other holiday baking. Over 40 people stopped by for dessert during the course of the evening and I still had leftovers. Everyone had a great time and I am already thinking about this year’s festival. I did learn something important along the way. The “bake cake now and glaze later” approach will have you glazing and frosting cakes all evening.
The desserts included the following:

• Pecan Tarts
• Heath Bar Chocolate Brownies
• Cranberry Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies w/Nuts
• Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
• McNannygocious Pound Cake
• Egg Nog Pound Cake
• 7 Up Cake
• Chocolate Brownies
• Lunchroom Butter Cookies
• Sweet Potato Pie
• Chocolate Egg Nog Rum Cake
• Egg Nog Rum Cake
• Lemon Pound Cake
• Hershey’s Chocolate Swirl Chip Cookies
• Red Velvet Cake

Chocolate Egg Nog Rum Cake, originally uploaded by in2jazz.

1 cup of butter (2 sticks)
2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted Cake Flour
3 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup eggnog (I like the Berkeley Farms Eggnog from Albertson’s)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup Myers’s dark rum
1 package of Jell-O chocolate pudding
3 heaping tablespoons of Hershey’s Cocoa

Cream butter, gradually add sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Add eggs one at a time to creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture alternately with eggnog and flavoring, beating after each addition until smooth. Add package of chocolate pudding, rum and cocoa and mix well together. Pour batter into a greased 12-cup bundt pan. Bake at 350º for 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove and place on wax paper and let cool before putting on the glaze.

Rum Glaze

2 sticks of butter
1/2 granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup Karo syrup
1 cup of rum (currently using Myers’s Dark Rum and getting rave reviews!!!)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt butter in saucepan until lightly boiled (do not overheat). Add powdered sugar slowly with a wire wisk then add granulated sugar. Once dissolved under low heat, add brown sugar. After the brown sugar has dissolved, add Karo syrup. Keep stirring with wire wisk. Bring to a light boil. Add rum and bring to a boil while stirring with a wisk. Remove from heat and wisk in the vanilla extract. Add more powdered sugar for a thicker glaze.
Poke holes in the cool cake with meat fork. Drizzle and brush the glaze over the cake. Continue to brush the cake with glaze that has ran down the side. Let dry and serve.