Pound Cake topped with Strawberries

Hello All!
      I hope you had a great weekend. My weekend was good but work was very busy. We did not have any major issues there so I will count it as a win.  I will say, I can't wait until next weekend because I actually have a Saturday off. Yay! I finally get to spend some time with the hubby and not just an hour for once. I'm sure we will fill our day with fun stuff. Who am I kidding? We will probably just do stuff around the house and go grocery shopping. HaHa. Once thing is for sure, I will get to play around in the kitchen. I always look forward to that activity and I get quite a few requests for desserts from my co-workers because I use them a lot of time as my guinea pigs. They love it, I love it. It is definitely a win win situation. 
     Even though I was not able to spend a lot of time with the hubby it did not stop his request for a dessert this week. He mentioned he would like to have strawberry shortcake since we had some really pretty strawberries in the fridge. Have you seen all of the beautiful strawberries in the stores lately? They are a sign that spring has begun. I love this time of the year almost as much as I like the fall when the leaves change. I digress again. Back to the topic at hand. I do not like the sponge cake cups they sell in the produce section so I started thinking what I could make that would be better than those. I finally decided on pound cake. I think it is delicious and the perfect vehicle for the strawberries to sit on. I also wanted to jazz up the strawberries and I added Grand Marnier to them while they macerated in sugar. Let me tell you, it made it that much better. I think this will be my new thing. Oh, and the hubby loves it. The cake itself is very easy to make and it was very good in my opinion. I used a recipe out of the cookbook I have been using lately, Lick the Bowl Good, by Monica Holland. So far, I am really liking this book. The recipes are easy to make and they turn out pretty good. I think a couple of them I have tried need just a little tweaking to make them that much better. I guess that is how I goes, always looking for ways to improve recipes. Anyway, this is becoming a very long post so on with the recipe.

 

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake

by Monica Holland

 

Ingredients

1. 2 cups of all purpose flour
2. 1 tsp. of baking powder
3. 1/4 tsp. baking soda
4. 1/2 tsp. salt
5. 3/4 c of unsalted butter, room temperature
6. 1 1/2 c of granulated sugar
7. 2 large eggs
8. 1 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract and 1/2 of a vanilla bean with seed extracted
9. 3/4 c buttermilk

 

Directions

 

• Preheat oven to 325
• Prepare a 9X5 loaf pan - grease, flour, or spray and line with parchment paper
• In a bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and whisk together
• In a mixing bowl cream butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and blend for about 4 minutes.
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• Add eggs one at a time until fully combined. Scrape down the bowl as necessary. Add the vanilla and the vanilla beans.
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• On low speed as 1/3 of the flour mixture followed by 1/2 of the buttermilk, and repeat until both are mixed in.
• Add the mixture to the baking pan and bake for 75- 80 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Mine took about 70 minutes.
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• Cool in pan for about 15 minutes, remove and cool completely on rack.
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• For Strawberry topping use 3/4 of a pound of sliced strawberries and add 3 T of sugar to it and 1 T of Grand Marnier. Stir it and let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour so the strawberries can release their juices. Put on top of pound cake and enjoy. Top with whip cream if desired

 

        Overall, I think this is a very good and simple dessert perfect for spring or summer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I hope you have a good week and I will talk to you soon.