Cream Cheese Pound Cake

One of my favorite things to cook from, is my Southern Living cookbook. Pretty much everything I've made out of it has been a hit.


This is one of my favorite desserts from the book.  It's always a crowd pleaser and is just wonderful.  Plus, you can make as-is, or add lemon, or other flavoring to "jazz" it up a bit.  Add a little whipped cream and berries to the finished product, and oh-my-goodness, it is like summer on a plate.


The one pictured, has some lemon juice added to the batter and topped with a lemon glaze. Makes my mouth water, just thinking about it.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake


1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

(1/4 cup lemon juice if you want to make a lemon cake)

Preheat oven to 300°F.  Use an electric mixer to mix both butter and cream cheese until creamy.  Gradually add sugar and beat for 5 minutes, then add eggs one at a time, allowing each to incorporate before adding more.  Stir in lemon and vanilla.  Sift flour and salt and add gradually to the mixer, beating until well blended.  Pour batter into a well greased and floured bundt pan or tube cake pan.  Bake cake at 300 for an hour and 45 minutes, or until a toothpick can be removed cleanly.  Place pan on a wire rack and cool for 15 minutes, then remove the cake from the pan and complete cooling on the wire rack.

Lemon Glaze

1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

In a small bowl, whisk ingredients together until smooth. Add sugar or lemon juice for desired consistency. Drizzle over cake.

Pizza Night

I've done a couple of posts on pizza already, so this isn't some major, new thing, but I thought it was really good and wanted to share it.


One of our favorite pizza places on the planet is Hideaway Pizza, in Tulsa, Ok.  We love the "Tulsa Hurricane" pizza, which is loaded with canadian bacon, bacon, onion, bell pepper, pineapple and jalapeños. I just love the combination of sweet with savory and a little bit of heat.  


Sadly, we don't make it back to Tulsa very often, but we do our best to recreate our favorite pizza whenever we can.  Usually, we just order that combination on our pizza at our local pizza places, but that can get really pricey, really fast.  So we took a shot at making it a home.


I just used my super-easy beer crust and a simple sauce recipe and substituted pepperoni for the canadian bacon.  Not quite the same as Hideaway, but it was pretty easy and gave us a little taste of what we were missing. 


I also made another crust, topped it with a little butter, sugar and cinnamon, and had a great little dessert to have after dinner.

I really need to remember to make pizza more often. It is so much easier than I want to think it is! It's also so much cheeper than ordering out, and doesn't taste too bad either.






   Here's the recipe...


Pizza


1/2 of my beer crust dough
1/2 cup pizza sauce
2 cups mozzarella 
15-20 slices pepperoni
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/4 cup green bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup pineapple pieces
1/8-1/4 cup jarred jalapeño slices, chopped
olive oil


Lightly grease a pizza pan or cookie sheet with olive oil.  Spread the dough out with fingers to desired thickness (remember that the dough will rise a bit while cooking). Spread sauce over pizza, layer with the remaining ingredients and bake at 400 degrees for 20 min.


Cinnamon Sticks


1/2 beer crust dough
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
icing (recipe follows)


Spread dough out onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.  Spread butter onto crust. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and bake in 400 degree oven for 10-15 min.
Remove from oven, cool for 5 minutes and drizzle with icing.


Icing for Cinnamon Sticks


1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon butter, melted
small splash of vanilla extract


Whisk ingredients until smooth. Add more sugar or milk to get desired consistency.