Avocado-Lime Pound Cake

I've already made pound cake before that turned out well, so I wanted to challenge myself by taking a new spin on an old recipe. Scanning around my kitchen I saw an avocado and began thinking that maybe I could use an avocado to replace some of the butter in a cake. While this may seem crazy, both butter and avocado contain fats that would work similarly in a baking recipe.

So, I began to research. I made this recipe for Avocado Lime Pound Cake, loosely based off Joy the Baker's recipe for Avocado Pound Cake, and its good, and surprisingly doesn't even really taste like avocado.

I know the green may be off-putting, but trust me, it's good.

Recipe:

Our star ingredient of the day.

Ingredients:

1 ½  cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup yellow cornmeal

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon lime juice

½ teaspoon lime zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup buttermilk

Flesh of 1 ripe avocado, mashed

Yeah, I know it kind of looks
like baby food here...

Directions:

If you don't achieve the green color
you want, you can even use a
drop of food coloring.

Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease a loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda together.  In a larger bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. In a small bowl, mash the avocado, and spoon it into the butter and sugar mixture and beat this all together for another minute. Add in the eggs, one at a time, and then the buttermilk, vanilla, lime juice, and lime zest until combined. Slowly add in the dry ingredients, making sure not to over mix.

Once the batter is ready, pour it into your prepared loaf pan and place it in the oven for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the loaf cool for about 10 minutes before placing it on a cooling rack to cool completely. 

With the avocado, the cake came out really moist, and had some extra health benefits as well since avocado, while it does have fat, contains "healthy fats" instead of butter's only saturated fats.

Pound Cake

Having a stress fracture and being a senior who's pretty much checked out of school, I now have more time on my hands...great!
So instead of memorizing everyone's address from the school phone book or stalking my facebook minifeed, I instead have found different excuses to bake.
So tonight is a track team dinner so obviously I need to bake!

How about a nice pound cake? A little change from the typical store-bought cookies and brownies that are usually served, but its still so simple to make.

Recipe:
Ingredients:
3 sticks of butter
8 oz package of cream cheese
3 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 eggs
3 cups flour


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Run your knife along the edge to
make it easier to remove the cake.

Cream together the butter and cream cheese well and then add the sugar. Once this is well mixed, add the salt and vanilla, and then add each of the 6 eggs one at a time. Once all these ingredients are mixed together, slowly add in the flour.
Bake for 1 1/2 hours, and do not over-bake.
(Set your clock timer for a little earlier to check to prevent over-baking from occurring. Insert a toothpick to check to see if comes out clean, and is ready.)

Once the batter is homogenous, pour it into a well-greased 10 tube pan.

Sift powdered sugar on top to add a finishing touch.