In My Kitchen...

Perfect Almond Poundcake
I needed to make my favorite dessert for our belated family Christmas last weekend.  In order to do this, I needed to make an almond poundcake.  Usually, I have used tastefully simple's almond poundcake, but I didn't have a mix, so I had to fend for myself.  I searched my usual favorite recipe websites (allrecipes.com and epicurious.com) and didn't find anything that I wanted to use.  So I made up my own recipe- and it turned out to be just as good as the tastefully simple version.




Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
8 ounces almond paste
6 eggs, room temperature
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons almond extract


Directions
1.Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan.
2.In a large bowl, cream butter sugar and almond paste together until well mixed with an electric mixer. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until mixture is light and fluffy. Blend in flour and salt. Mix in almond extract. Turn batter into prepared pan.
3.Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick when inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan, and transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling.

After the poundcake was cooled, I cut 2/3 of it into cubes and made White Chocolate Almond Raspberry Trifle. YUM.







2/3 of an Almond Poundcake, cut into 1" cubes.
2 boxes white chocolate instant pudding
3 cups milk
1 container Cool Whip (8oz)
1 tsp almond extract
12oz frozen raspberries
With an electric mixer, mix pudding and milk until thick. Fold in Cool Whip and almond extract. In a clear glass bowl, layer the poundcake, pudding and raspberries, repeating 3-4 times and ending with the Raspberries. Refrigerate 2-3 hours before serving.


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