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Welcome to the Easter Edition of kick back and cook.

Today I am going to share with you my secret recipe of cherry cheesecake pound cake.

So without further ado let’s get started.

Now, this may not occur to you as a gadget but what kind of pan you use is definitely a gadget because it definitely affects the ease of preparation and baking. Now on my left here

I have got an aluminum pan which is very light and your cakes cooks very quickly.

I like the light colored fruit cake pan as it makes a very good presentation. Now when you use a dark pan it actually holds in the heat which is going to give you a darker crust instead of having a light moist cake.

It makes for a really great presentation. Now if you prefer you can use a light colored pan which has and it’s made with a shape so you get a really nice texture.

So it’s really just your favorite what you would like. So I am going to make my angel fruit pan cake and you make yours in what ever you like. So,

This is how we make our cake.

Now for my cherry cheese pan cake I have taken sweet cherries and I am going to lay them at the bottom of the pan so that I can get it at the bottom of the slice that I am going to serve.

There are going to be 8-10 cherries. This is a really good desert because it satisfies the craving of just about any guests you have sweet, buttery, cheese cake fruit. Just any kind of desert lover will love this recipe.

Now also spray that pan with a non-stick spray that has flour in it. Look on your baking ……., its not just the same as the regular nonstick spray. You want to get a non stick spray that has flour in it and that makes a big difference. Do I have sprayed my pan, put my cherries in there and now I am going to show you how to make the batter.

Now taken two sticks of butter and have allowed them to come to room temperature. Into the two sticks of butter, I am adding three cups of sugar. Now good trick to use to make sure that your sugar doesn’t go everywhere when you start creaming it is to just put a towel over your mixer and then make sure you have covered the bowl and then turn it on medium. Want to tell you little bit about creaming butter and sugar. It is possible to over cream your sugar and butter, it will almost look like eggs that are cuddly . That is over beat again and you don’t want to do that. You want it to look like sugar has dissolved and then when you put it between your fingers, you feel the grain ——. I have taken 6 eggs and cracked them into a bowl. So while that’s mixing, I am going to break up the yolks and am going to mix these very very well.

A lot of recipes in baking will tell you to add the eggs one at a time and this really makes a lot of sense because the egg whites are lot like water and the binding ingredient in an egg is the yolk. So essentially if you add the eggs one at a time, you are adding water to oil which doesn’t mix. Well by doing this, the yolk automatically binds with your oil. Let’s take a look at the butter and sugar and see if its ready. So you can see here when I am trying to press down, it almost looks like dough and then when you pick it up it looks like grainy white sugar but when you look at it, it’s almost as though it has been dissolved. And then I am going slowly going to add the eggs. Going to lift this and slowly scrape the sides. Perfect! To this, I am adding about a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Now I going to let you know a secret so don’t tell anyone. What I do with my pancake is that I add butter extract. This gives a really rich buttery flavor without adding five cups of butter and people when they taste it they think that oh my gosh I am going to put on 20 pounds eating this cake. Well you know and I know that its butter flavor and its not butter but it tastes just the same. So I am going to add two table spoons of butter flavor. Now depending on how rich the butter flavor you want, you can use more or you can use less. I always say 5 pieces of cake of cake better than one so I use two tablespoons of butter flavor instead of just one. So there we have Vanilla and butter extract, just whirl for a second doesn’t take long.

Alright I am just letting you know all my secrets tonight. In addition to using butter extract instead of all that butter into your cake, you can add half a cup of apple sauce instead of a cup of oil. Anytime you have any type of sweet bread recipe or sweet cake recipe, you can substitute half of the measurement of the oil in apple sauce and that can be your oil. And you know what you can cut up to 20 g of fat per serving in a cake.

So now we’ll turn this on, add half a cup of apple sauce and that gives such a rich buttery aroma. Put that off. We are now going to sift 3 cups of all purpose flour. When you live in an environment which is very high in humidity like here is Jamaica, you are going to get lumps in your flour. And so this is a good way to keep your flour from having a whole lot of lumps in it. The air in there makes it very light and fluffy. Now going to add three cups of flour and I am also going to add one cup of plain yogurt. In a lot of recipes they will tell you to alternate your wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.

Alternating those ingredients just makes a lot of mess of your kitchen. Here what I do again is that I cover my mixer with a towel and then I put in on medium for about 30 seconds and check it periodically just until the ingredients are moistened. Turn it off before you remove the towel. Going to unlock this, lift that up and scrape the sides and then I going to stir this to moisten the remaining flour that has come up from the sides and now I am going to put this in my cake pan.

Now I am going to take my batter and pour about a third of the way up over my cherries. Now tap it around the corners so that it evenly spread.

I have taken some soften cream cheese about three ounces and a quarter of a cup of confection sugar and mixing this up and try not to make a mess. You know mom used to say that if you are not going to a make a mess in the kitchen you will not ……… Now I am going to add three to four cherries that I have chopped up. Stir those in and this is going to turn into a nice pink color, perfect for Easter. Now one thing that I do since it is Easter is I take a tooth pick and I dip it in blue food coloring and swirl in round in my batter. To make sure that your food coloring last long, use a new toothpick every time you start over. And this is something that your kids will enjoy doing. And now I am going to take my pink cherry cake filling and spoon it into the middle. It doesn’t take a lot. You just want to put a little ribbon through the serve.

I take the cake batter on top of it. Now I am going to take my spatula and take that excess from the sides and now I am going to spread it a bit as I don’t want to disturb my ribbon underneath. I am again going to swirl the blue coloring as pink and blue make purple. So you can see that when everything is done I have filled up three quarters of my cake pan. I have pre-heated my oven to 350 degrees and I am going to bake it for an hour and ten minutes. Now you do not have to stick to the time that I will check it after an hour and ten minutes. Just check it after about 50 minutes. It’s done when it springs back. The toothpick trick will not work on this. So when you touch it and its springs back its done. Now we will bake this and I will see you in an hour.

Now this has been baking for 55 minutes instead of an hour and ten minutes. And that’s it. This smells so good. And look here. It is going to be beautiful when we cut it. Better let this cool for 20 minutes and then I am going to invert this onto a serving plate and decorate it and show you that how easy is it.

My cake is cold, going to invert onto a serving cardboard plate and look at that. But that’s not enough for presentation. Just going to ice the top of it and since we have an Easter cake here take some Easter grass and put that in the middle and there you have it a nice Easter cake. I am going to cut a slice of this and see just how good it is. You can see here you have got a little bit of blue here and little pink filling and up here at the top a little bit of purple. A beautiful beautiful Cake.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of kick back and cook. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. See you.

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Dessert, Cooking Tips, Cooking Recipes