Orange Sugar-Dark Chocolate Pound Cake: For Winter Nights and Baker's Withdrawal

Wintry clouds kiss small towns; 
Sprinkles of glitter catch on evergreen trees. 

 

It's December.

The coats are longer, the mornings are colder, and the desserts are richer.

This fall, I didn't get much chance to whirl around my kitchen, measure spoonfuls of vanilla extract, and sift flour-sugar mixtures, so extravagant autumn desserts with crisp apples, warm cinnamon or
sweet pumpkin unfortunately never found their ways from recipe stacks to oven racks. And after weeks of not baking, I found myself daydreaming about creaming together butter and sugar or crumbling streusel topping for a crumb cake. I was experiencing baker's withdrawal. 

So when I found myself with free time and an open kitchen, the first thing I did was run to the pantry and take out flour, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. The staples. I wanted to bake something simple, yet sophisticated. Something I was sure would turn out golden and beautiful and rich. Something called a pound cake.

Pound cakes are fancy (I'll definitely argue that) but I wanted this to be fancier. And nothing is fancier than citrus dark chocolate, especially on smoky winter nights.

When I was younger, my sister and I would stand on our tiptoes and rest our chins on the kitchen counter. My grandmother stood behind the counter, her weathered hands reaching into supermarket plastic bags. She'd hand over oranges and tangerines, always presenting them as if they were from an orchard in heaven, not the produce section of a Persian market. My sister and I would dash to the sofa (because PBS commercial breaks were always so short) and peel the orbs with tender care. And when the peels curled off, a spray of citrus sparkled the air, a firework opening for the edible wedges. As I sat criss-cross applesauce on that blue corduroy couch in that tiny apartment, I remember thinking that my grandmother was right. That oranges, at least the ones we had, were other worldly.

So it figures that a kiss of sweet orange is a marvelous pound cake flavor. Orange zest is scrubbed into the sugar and it adds a delicate citrus note to the cake. I added a teaspoon of orange extract into the batter as well (not noted in the original recipe). The extract gives the thick cake a beautiful scent.

This golden cracked-top pound cake is fluffy and soft because of cream cheese is creamed with the butter. Also, this cake doesn't have an eggy smell (which actually is a big issue for a lot of pound cake recipes because pound cake uses around 4 eggs).

Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee or hot beverage of choice.

So for those days when you need the company of flour, butter and sugar, or for when you want a piece of heaven on a cake plate: this is the perfect recipe.

Also: a quick note on my blog: the recipes I've posted here have been variations of other recipes but starting next post, I'll be posting my recipes and original culinary creations.

Recipe link: http://joythebaker.com/2012/03/chocolate-orange-cream-cheese-pound-cake/
         {Add 1/2 teaspoon of orange extract when you add the vanilla extract. Bake time took me about     90 min. I covered the loaf with aluminum foil from 45 min to 75 min. Not entirely sure why it took my oven so long…}

Thanks for reading. :)