A pound cake with what?!
I made pound cake last week with a secret ingredient.
It's peeking through behind my slice of cake- can you guess what it is?!?
If you guessed avocado then "you are correct sir"!
If your reaction to that statement is "what the f*ck?," then let me explain...
At work we had a pot-luck party with an A-B-C cook-off theme. This meant you could enter a dish using Avocado, Berries and/or Cheese. I wanted to try something different and had recently seen a recipe for avocado pie on NSHP's pie challenge. Hmmmm, sounded interesting and perfect for the cookoff.
So I'd settled on avocado dessert but I took a bit more time scouring the interwebs for other ideas. Eventually I came across an avocado pound cake recipe that looked good and I decided to bake it up in a bundt pan (or as my family says, bun-dit)
*Turns out I wasn't alone in my desire to be different. We had at least two other avocado desserts: avocado chocolate mousse and avocado chocolate truffles! Both were super delicious.
In the end I didn't win the avocado category, but I DID get a prize for the cheese category (my goat cheese, dill and grapefruit appetizer, although my delicious goat cheese truffles would have also been a good choice). I got two tickets to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and this snazzy chef's hat. Is it sad to say that I was more excited about the $1 hat than the awesome tickets??
Wanna learn more about this green cake?
So you're probably wondering what I thought of the cake. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.
One reason I love pound cake is the butter flavor. In this case, a lot of the fat from butter is replaced with fat from avocado, so it doesn't have that same flavor. But I'll be honest, there were other people at the pot-luck who enjoyed the cake much more than I did.
And even though I didn't love the cake, I'm not sure the avocados are to blame. This recipe calls for cornmeal and I'm not a fan of cornbread/cornmeal in general. The cornmeal flavor wasn't overpowering, but a hint of it was there alongside the avocado. So it's likely the combination of the two just didn't wow me.
But hey, it's an interesting and fun recipe to try. Although I personally won't make it again I'd never discourage anyone from trying it out and seeing what you think.
Buen Provecho,
Jackie
Avocado Pound Cake, from Joy The Baker
makes 2 9x4x3-inch loaves
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk + 3/4 TBSP lemon juice, allowed to sit for ~10 minutes)
flesh of 1- 2 ripe avocados, just over a cup of avocado, mashed
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two loaf pans and set aside.
2. In a medium sized bowl, sift together flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside. Set the four eggs out on the counter to come to room temperature while you beat the butter and sugar.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter on medium speed until softened and pliable. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the avocado and beat another minute to incorporate. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is thoroughly mixed.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating 1 minute after the addition of each egg. Beat in vanilla extract.
5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add half of the flour mixture, all of the buttermilk, and then the rest of the flour mixture. Beat just until combined.
6. Divide the dough between the two loaf pans and place in the oven. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean. I checked my cakes every ten minutes or so after the 30 minute mark. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Note: I only have one loaf pan so decided to use my bundt pan instead. But this recipe makes a LOT of batter, so my pan was full almost to the rim.
Took a while to cook all the way through, which mean the bottom got pretty dark. But you could always cut that off if the same happens to you.
If you guessed avocado then "you are correct sir"!
If your reaction to that statement is "what the f*ck?," then let me explain...
At work we had a pot-luck party with an A-B-C cook-off theme. This meant you could enter a dish using Avocado, Berries and/or Cheese. I wanted to try something different and had recently seen a recipe for avocado pie on NSHP's pie challenge. Hmmmm, sounded interesting and perfect for the cookoff.
So I'd settled on avocado dessert but I took a bit more time scouring the interwebs for other ideas. Eventually I came across an avocado pound cake recipe that looked good and I decided to bake it up in a bundt pan (or as my family says, bun-dit)
*Turns out I wasn't alone in my desire to be different. We had at least two other avocado desserts: avocado chocolate mousse and avocado chocolate truffles! Both were super delicious.
In the end I didn't win the avocado category, but I DID get a prize for the cheese category (my goat cheese, dill and grapefruit appetizer, although my delicious goat cheese truffles would have also been a good choice). I got two tickets to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and this snazzy chef's hat. Is it sad to say that I was more excited about the $1 hat than the awesome tickets??
Wanna learn more about this green cake?
So you're probably wondering what I thought of the cake. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.
One reason I love pound cake is the butter flavor. In this case, a lot of the fat from butter is replaced with fat from avocado, so it doesn't have that same flavor. But I'll be honest, there were other people at the pot-luck who enjoyed the cake much more than I did.
And even though I didn't love the cake, I'm not sure the avocados are to blame. This recipe calls for cornmeal and I'm not a fan of cornbread/cornmeal in general. The cornmeal flavor wasn't overpowering, but a hint of it was there alongside the avocado. So it's likely the combination of the two just didn't wow me.
But hey, it's an interesting and fun recipe to try. Although I personally won't make it again I'd never discourage anyone from trying it out and seeing what you think.
Buen Provecho,
Jackie
Avocado Pound Cake, from Joy The Baker
makes 2 9x4x3-inch loaves
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup milk + 3/4 TBSP lemon juice, allowed to sit for ~10 minutes)
flesh of 1- 2 ripe avocados, just over a cup of avocado, mashed
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two loaf pans and set aside.
2. In a medium sized bowl, sift together flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside. Set the four eggs out on the counter to come to room temperature while you beat the butter and sugar.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter on medium speed until softened and pliable. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the avocado and beat another minute to incorporate. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is thoroughly mixed.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating 1 minute after the addition of each egg. Beat in vanilla extract.
5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add half of the flour mixture, all of the buttermilk, and then the rest of the flour mixture. Beat just until combined.
6. Divide the dough between the two loaf pans and place in the oven. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean. I checked my cakes every ten minutes or so after the 30 minute mark. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Note: I only have one loaf pan so decided to use my bundt pan instead. But this recipe makes a LOT of batter, so my pan was full almost to the rim.
Took a while to cook all the way through, which mean the bottom got pretty dark. But you could always cut that off if the same happens to you.
I've seen an avocado chocolate cake making the rounds on vegan blogs. Pound cake does need the butter flavor, but you can "hide" anything in chocolate and it will still taste great!
ReplyDeleteYea, after trying the vegan avocado chocolate mousse and avocado chocolate truffles that people brought I realized that the cocoa powder completely covers up the avocado flavor. Wanted to try something that I knew wouldn't mask the flavor. Glad to have experimented in something different though!
ReplyDeleteVery creative ... and looks like something I'd like!
ReplyDeleteHmm, when I saw a big brown strangely-textured blob in the middle of your bundt cake... sorry, it was not avocado that popped into my head. I'm sure it was delicious.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try the cheese/dill/grapefruit winner!