If you're 1) online and 2) love food, chances are you're on top of most TikTok and Instagram food trends. There was the baked feta pasta; the lemon possets; the "feel better" pastina soup (all of which are delicious).
"Cream Cheese Pound Cake — I am only sharing because I love this sub, but I tell everyone else they can have the recipe when I am dead. More in comments :)" the poster wrote before sharing the handwritten recipe, which I've transcribed below with imperial and US measurements:
"3 cups (390 g) cake flour
3 cups (600g) sugar
8oz (227g) cream cheese
1 cup (2 sticks or 227g) butter
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Cream butter and cream cheese together till fluffy. Add sugar, eggs then flour. Beat well after each addition. Add vanilla last.
Bake [in a] cold oven [at] 325°F (163°C) for 1½ hours.
Grease [the tin] with shortening and then flour [before putting the batter in it]."
The recipe owner added that you should let the butter, eggs, and cream cheese reach room temp before you get cooking and that the best tin to use is a "tube tin" (the kind you'd use for angel or bundt cake). The post garnered a lot of attention, earning 1.5k upvotes and inspiring many, many recreations. Here are just a few of them, as well as comments Redditors had about the end result:
While u/aylagirl63 found that a tiny part of the cake was "underdone," they agreed this was probably due to over-beating the ingredients or over-filling the tin. However, despite a slightly-less-baked section in "a small part at the inside bottom edge" of the cake, they said, "Still tastes divine! I’ll be baking this one again and again. The crunchy parts are YUM!"
Meanwhile, u/MayaMiaMe found that it was "more moist than I thought it would be," adding, "The cake is out of this world. Will be making it again and again." They also shared that they added the zest of one lemon to the mix, and recommended banging the tin on the counter before releasing the cake to ensure it doesn't stick.
Site user u/hikingbear_4 said, "just baked the famous cream cheese pound cake and it came out perfect! So good. The crispy outer edges really make it the best... Definitely a must-try if you love pound cake!" They reckoned an angel cake tin was partly the secret to their success, as well as their own lemon cream cheese icing recipe, which I've copied below.
u/ThatOneDudeFromIowa had the genius idea of turning the recipe into cupcakes. "Same recipe, took about an hour to bake," they said, adding that it made 24 cupcakes that were each "50% top crust." Sounds like a pretty great idea, considering how many people have raved about this cake's crunchy bits...
Gluten-free site user u/anarchisttiger, meanwhile, "used Bob's Red Mill 1:1 gluten-free flour, cup for cup" and said "Beautiful! No notes!" They did say, though, that a sugar coat in the tin could have made the cake crispier and that they'd love to try it with some lemon zest (a recurring theme in these posts).
Lastly, there's my personal fave — creative Redditor u/goodsirperry "made the cream cheese pound cake as a pineapple upside-down cake in 15-inch cast iron." They shared their method: "I used melted butter and brown sugar on the bottom with the pineapple rings. Some of the caramelised sugar bits stuck to the skillet so I peeled them off and placed them back onto the cake, it's ugly but eats good! Next time I'll do the next-size-down skillet to get a taller cake."
You can see lots (and lots, and lots) more Reddit try-outs through this "pound cake" search in the r/OldRecipes subReddit, but having scanned a lot of them now, here are some recurring themes I've noticed:
- You really do have to start cooking this cake in a cold oven. Pre-heating the oven first will prevent that delicious crispy crust everyone loves from forming quite as well as it would otherwise.
- Lemon seems to go great with the recipe! You can make some lemon icing, include some zest in the batter, or pair it with a curd. I'm sure other citrus fruits would go great as well — I'd love to see a blood orange or even a coconut and lime version.
- Tap the tin against the counter once it's cooled to help release the cake.
- I've seen recipes with angel cake/bundt tins, and I've seen them without. While the loaf tin versions come out well, the bundt tin seems to add a bit more crunch IMO — if you have one, use it. However, it doesn't seem to be catastrophic if you don't.
- A common-ish complaint with this cake is that it can run a little underdone. Make sure your cake tin is large enough to contain all the batter, that your oven temp is correct, and that you don't over-beat the ingredients.
So, are you tempted to try the viral recipe? If so, share us a pic of your very own cream cheese pound cake in the comments below!
Thanks so much to u/_PopsicleFeet for sharing their family recipe in the first place, and to the amazing people of u/OldRecipes for sharing their recreations.