Cream Cheese Pound Cake With Strawberry Compote

Remember Sara Lee pound cakes?  The other day I was grocery shopping with my mother and we were remembering how we had a Sara Lee pound cake phase when I was in elementary school.  I don't even know why, they aren't even that good.  Home made pound cake, on the other hand, is pretty amazing.

I had a large amount of strawberries and cream cheese lying around in my refrigerator and thought they might pair well, so today's treat was cream cheese pound cake with strawberry compote.  This was laborious, there's no way around it.  But it's mostly my fault because I doubled the recipe in order to get rid of all my cream cheese--making four loaves, baking at 1 and 1/2 hours each. And I only have one loaf pan, so basically this took 6+ hours.  But during the oven part of things I got some reading done, so that was nice.  

This cake is immensely dense, as a pound cake should be, though not clumsily dense--not brick like.  It somehow still manages to have a cake like texture.  The best part of this pound cake is that it isn't too sweet.  It's a little tangy from the lemon zest and the cream cheese which goes well with the strawberry compote (where the bulk of the sweetness comes from).  

Serve with ice cream for best result.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter (or 3 sticks)

3 cups flour

1 8 oz package of cream cheese

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 lemons zested

6 eggs

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1. preheat the oven to 325

2. beat butter until whipped

3. add cream cheese until fully incorporated

4. add sugar and beat until the mixture is fluffy

5. add lemon zest and beat for 2 more minutes

6. add vanilla and almond extract

7. add salt

8. beat in flour, one cup at a time

9. line a loaf pan with wax paper and then pour mixture about 3/4 full into the pan

10. bake for about 1 hour and 30 minutes

Meanwhile...

Make the strawberry compote

Ingredients:

2 cups strawberries, washed and hulled

1/2 cup sugar

the juice of one lemon

Mix all ingredients into a sauce pan over medium-low heat until the strawberries start to break down and the sauce becomes syrupy.