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cream cheese pound cake
About forty years ago, my parents clipped a recipe from the Philadelphia Inquirer called “Philly Pound Cake.” I think my dad has made several batches of these amazing cream cheese pound cakes every year since then. He still makes them as gifts for co-workers, friends, and the mailman. Sometimes he keeps them on hand in the freezer as emergency presents when someone shows up unexpectedly to our house with a gift in hand. Whenever he makes a batch, they all get wrapped up, minus one. That one sits on on the counter with a knife nearby, and everyone can walk by a slice off a piece.
One year, when my family visited my parents for Christmas, I walked by the kitchen and noticed several grisly incisions in the pound cake and a butcher knife sunk into the top. Next to the counter was the kitchen stool. Evidently, my two-and-a-half-year-old had helped himself to a piece.
If you live at high altitude like I do, I am afraid I have no real wisdom on how to get these to rise properly. See how flat the little tops are? Whenever I have employed the conventional methods—raising the temperature, reducing the sugar and butter, adding more flour, blah, blah, blah—the flavor is altered way too much to make it worth it. If mine don’t rise to fill my aesthetic requirement, I simply cut them up and arrange them on paper plates and give them out that way, or layer the slices in a trifle.
I am sorry I cannot cite the exact source of this recipe. Over the years it has become such a favorite, it feels like our own. However, I don’t think my family has ever altered it since its publication in the Sixties. So, thank you, whoever you are, who developed this recipe. It has been a much-loved holiday tradition in our family.
philly pound cake
2 sticks (225g) unsalted butter, softened, but not quite room temperature
1 8 ounce (225g) package of cream cheese, softened slightly
1 1/2 (285g) cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups (250g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
confectioners’ sugar for dusting
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees (165 degrees celsius). Spray four mini loaf pans with non-stick cooking spray, and place on a cookie sheet.
2. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and cream cheese. Pour in sugar and mix until smooth. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing well until each is incorporated.
3. While ingredients are mixing, whisk together four, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients.
4. Distribute batter evenly among the four pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50-60 minutes. Let cool and dust with confectioners’ sugar. Wrap any extras tightly in plastic wrap and freeze for up to one month.
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE pound cake. These look great.
I always use pound cake to make trifle, too.
On a side note, thanks for posting today. Makes the obsessive blog-checking worth it!
Looks so delicious, I am going to make this tomorrow, thanks Jaime!
Great! Was looking for a good food gift for Christmas this year. Thanks!
How many oz. do your mini loaf pans hold? Will it work with bigger pans?
Yummy! Thanks for sharing Jaime! We can snack on this when we watch Narnia!
The pans I used hold just under 2 cups. You can use bigger, regular sized loaf pans–I used small ones to increase my hope of getting them to rise at high altitude. For a regular size loaf, just increase the cooking time by ten to twenty minutes.
that looks great!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. It looks relly delicious, I want to try!
Thank you for sharing.
I LOVE your blog!
Hello from Australia.
Thanks for putting the measurements in kg and the temperature in celsius for us countries that use those measurements, very helpful. Receipe looks good, can’t wait to try it.
I also assume that unbleached all purpose flour is just plain flour. Stupid thought but here with have a two types of flour plain flour and one called self-raising flour (which is ususally used in cakes) – not sure if you have something like that in the States.
Love your background by the way.
When you give these as gifts, do you take them out of the foil pans or just wrap the whole thing and give like that? Do you use parchment paper in the pans?
I also don’t have unbleached flour. All I have is bleached a-p flour. I will make this recipe with bleached a-p flour and let you know how it comes out. Then the next time, I will buy unbleached flour and make it again. I really don’t know what the difference is except the color between the flours.
Baking is always a challenge for me!
When I give these as gifts, I always take them out of the pans so that I can use them again.
As far as the question of bleached v. unbleached, I always use the unbleached for health reasons.
All-purpose flour, whether bleached or unbleached, is wheat flour that has been stripped of the germ and the bran. Without these essential parts, the flour is rendered nutritionally deficient, and so most white flours are enriched (nutrients are added back in).
Though neither kind of white flour is great for you, I like to use the unbleached because it is more natural and doesn’t use chemicals to get it whiter. Also, I think unbleached tastes better, though there isn’t a huge difference.
Here are a couple links I found.
This one talks about how white flour is made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_grain
And this one talks about how bleached flour is bleached:
http://morgansmenu.blogspot.com/2007/10/bleached-vs-unbleached-flour.html
Hope that helps, Susan.
I think this recipe came from the mavens at Philadelphia cream cheese.
as soon as a saw the pic of the cake i new this was the one for me. i made it last night and 45 minutes of it being out the oven it was gone. my family loved it. so much so that they asked me to make another one today. i want to double the recipe but i’m not sure about doubleing … especailly the salt. i dont want the cake to come out to salty. please help. thank you
Doubling should work just fine, as long as you have a big enough bowl. My dad doubles his all the time. As far as the salt, I know it sounds like a lot. If you won’t be using kosher or coarse salt, but regular table salt, you might want to only add 2 or 2 1/2 teaspoons for the whole double batch, or you could just double it straight over (by using 3 teaspoons). It has always worked for us.
Thank you for the links on the wheat flour info a few posts back. I will be switching. I somehow presumed the cost of the flour equated to quality since the bleached four is always more money. Now I know better thanks to you. Honestly, I can’t see myself ever buying bleached flour again! Thank you!
I have been baking this philly loaf for years! Always popular. I sometimes have to use lime instead of lemon… depending on which country I am in but it is always a success anyway. I like to poke holes on top of the loaf with a skewer and drizzle a lemon (or lime) glaze over the cake while still warm.
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Hi, I love your blog, and I tested this recipe, and it’s really delicious…thank you
xxx
[...] I decided to continue trying recipes, and I found several in the Internet. This recipe I found here. What I can say is that the cakes with cream cheese are really delicious, before I only wanted to [...]
I too found this same recipe in a newspaper in Oakland County, MI in the 60’s and have been baking it ever since. My mom would bake the loaves at Christmas and add nuts and chopped marischino cherries and give them as christams gifts along w/her cookies. We also consider this a “family” recipe. As a matter of fact, I am baking some this morning. Thanks for sharing your blog.