Hello Bakers,
Last week one of my Craftsy students asked me if I had a Mascarpone pound cake recipe.
I felt bad because I thought I had one but could not find it anywhere. So, I bregan poking around the internet and in my library and came up empty handed.
I really don't like disappointing you so I decided to adapt a cream cheese pound cake from
way back when and see what happened.
I chose a cream cheese pound cake from Gourmet's Best Desserts published in 1988.
This was one of the first cookbooks I received when I joined, The Good Cook Cookbook
Club. One of the perks of the club was that you got your first four books for a dollar each!
Every month after that, a little catalog of cookbooks came in the mail. All you had to do was to buy two books a year and keep up with the form that said you didn't want any books that month.
That's where I got into trouble.
At this time was very busy running my B&B and my restaurant. I had a husband, who ran the business with me and a baby who was the most adorable baby in the history of babies, at least I thought so.
So the books kept coming, because I ordered them or had forgotten to mail out the form.
Eventually I had to quit the club. I sent them a sad but truthful letter telling them
that my husband had threatened to divorce me if I didn't leave the club. The bookshelf in the kitchen was bursting with books.
Incidentally, one of the first things I did when,years later, that marriage ended was to rejoin The Good Cook cookbook club. :)
Gourmet's Best Desserts is a gem. The photographs may feel a little dated but they
really bring back memories of that wonderful magazine.
Sorry, nobody did it better then Gourmet.
Here is Mascarpone pound cake - a little revamped and totally delicious. The mascarpone affects
the crumb directly, giving it a silken texture.
Enough chat - here is the low down on Mascarpone. It has almost as much fat as butter, 70-75%.
When it is being mixed, it has a tendency to break, the water in the cheese separates out. When this happens, it is a mess. Maybe some of you have had this experience when making Tiramisu.
Because of this I am adding the mascarpone alternatively with the flour. This will give the fat in the cheese lots of insulation and it won't break.
I hope you enjoy making this pound cake. I swirled mine with streusel so that I could send it to work with my current husband, who loves to have cake for breakfast.
Happy Baking!
Colette
Mascarpone Pound Cake
1 loaf pan or 1 small Bundt pan - greased, line the loaf pan with a parchment paper sling
Stand Mixer or hand held mixer fitted with paddle attachment
Spatula
Offset spatula
Sifter
Parchment paper if using loaf pan
8 ounces (227g) butter
8.75 ounces (248g) sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
4 eggs, lightly mixed
4 ounces mascarpone cheese
8 ounces (227g) cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Optional: Streusel or Jam
Streusel recipe is at the bottom of the page.
1. Preheat your oven to 350 conventional, 325 convection.
2. Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 8 minutes.
3. Add the eggs in two increments, mixing for 20 seconds at low speed and then 25 seconds at medium high speed. Add then second increment of egg and repeat mixing sequence.
4. Starting with one third of the flour, alternate adding the flour and the cheese to creamed mixture,
Mixing only until the ingredient disappears. After the last batch of flour is in. Finish mixing with a spatula.
5. Spoon batter evenly in the pan. If you want to do a swirl of streusel or jam, spoon in half, top with your streusel or layer of jam and then the remaining batter.
6. Bake at 350 degrees or 325 convection. Start checking in 40 minutes. A cake tester or skewer inserted in the center should come out clean.
(Mine took 53 minutes in my Wolf Counter top Convection oven.)
7. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then un mold onto a wire rack.
Dust with powdered sugar.
Streusel
Bowl
Bowl Scraper
4 ounces (113g) flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1.4 ounces (40g) brown sugar
1 ounce (28g) granulated sugar
3 ounces (85g) cold butter
1. Sift all dry ingredients into a large bowl.
2. Cut in butter until it looks like coarse meal - the butter chunks must all disappear.
3. At the end you can mix with your hands - but the mixture should not clump up or be mixed to the point that the butter melts.
Leftover streusel freezes very well.