Dater I made this recipe:
May 18, 2015 – our wedding anniversary
Over 300 Delicious Ways to Use Your Bundt Pans by Nordic Ware Kitchen/Northland Aluminum
Products, Inc.
Published by Northland Aluminum Products, Inc.
© 1973
Recipe: Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Poppy Seeds – p.
45
Well, they don't plan weddings like they used to.
In 1991, when we got married, you would have thought
dinosaurs roamed the earth. Weddings
were simple all the way around and when it came to cake, there were only a few
choices. And yes, we had a few cake
sampling appointments, but for flavor, we were pretty limited to chocolate,
vanilla, maybe a layer with a swirl of each, and that was that. And your frosting choices were just as
limited; if memory serves, we had to work hard to find a buttercream topping.
Naturally, I wanted something else, something different but
something that also didn't cost a fortune (and my lord, do they ever cost a
fortune). I pulled several very prettily
designed, very ahead-of-its-time cake photos from various wedding magazines and
took them to every bakery we visited, only to have every single designer shake
her/his head and say "It's gorgeous but we can't do that." Fast forward to today where everybody is recreating those designs
and more.
So after searching high and low for a cake designer, we
stumbled upon a guy who made us what we wanted and that is how we ended up with
a lemon poppy seed wedding cake with buttercream frosting. I so wanted to put little toothpick holders
on the tables so people wouldn't be caught on camera with poppy seed stuck to
their teeth but nixed that after realizing my mother would likely frown – and
then some – on that idea. This is a
woman who coordinated her wedding outfit down to her fingernail polish. Putting toothpicks on a table, even in jest,
would have rendered her speechless although when she recovered, she probably
would have said "That's tacky, Ann."
For the record, my mother did not "do" tacky.
Despite those pesky poppy seeds, mom was quite happy with
our wedding cake. It was simple, it was
really tasty and it was different. But, and
I may have mentioned this in a prior post, it wasn't decorated like I thought
it would be and that bugged me for quite some time until a sister-in-law showed
me a photo and then it dawned on me: the
cake should have been decorated on all layers with fresh flowers. But something got lost in translation and the
flowers ringed the bottom layer only. Oh
well.
I might have also mentioned that our venue was insistent Andy
and I cut the cake immediately after the ceremony and before anyone sat down
for dinner as they needed time to cut the rest of the cake to serve it for
dessert. I tried to argue otherwise but
lost that battle because that meant that nobody but the photographer and the
immediate wedding party got to see us cut the cake. As these things go though, this was not the
end of the world unless you were my cousin's two year old son who was very
upset to see the cake he'd been eyeballing during the ceremony being whisked
away. We were such a mean bride and
groom, were we not? PS—he eventually got
to have his cake and eat it, too.
When I made this version of our wedding cake the other
night, I intended to frost it with a buttercream frosting and then changed my
mind and my husband got the same look on his face as my cousin's son: major displeasure, near tears. It's just that this cake is pretty delicate
and I just didn't see the point of frosting it with a heavier frosting. Of course, I could have just made the
frosting anyway seeing as how I'm a frosting person rather than a cake person,
but just decided to leave well enough alone.
We are enjoying (still) every morsel of our
walk-down-memory-lane-wedding cake.
Happy Anniversary, Andy!
I saw the date coming so I baked you a cake. Enjoy!
Cream Cheese Pound
Cake with Poppy Seeds – makes 1 12-cup Bundt cake
1 cup butter or margarine, room temperature
1 (8 oz) pkg. cream cheese, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs
1 ¼ cups sifted flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup golden raisins
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
Filling:
¼ cup poppyseed
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
¼ teaspoon vanilla
In small bowl, combine filling ingredients and set
aside. In large bowl, cream butter or
margarine and cream cheese until light and fluffy; add sugar and vanilla; beat
well approximately 5 minutes. (Very important to cream well!) Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after
each addition. Sift together flour and
baking powder; add to creamed mixture.
Stir in ½ cup walnuts and raisins.
(Ann's Note: I didn't use walnuts
but I did use raisins, although I could have left them out and it would have
been fine.)
Grease Mini-Bundt Pan
or Fiesta Party Pan (Ann's
Note: or use a 12-cup Bundt pan i.e. the
"original") and coat inside of pan with remaining finely chopped
nuts. Spoon ½ of batter into prepared
pan, sprinkle filling mixture over batter; top with remaining batter. Use knife and swirl through batter. Bake at 325F for 65-70 minutes or until cake
tests done. (Ann's Note: I baked mine for about 75-80 minutes to
ensure all the dough was cooked.) Cool
in pan 10-15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to complete cooling. Wrap cake tightly in plastic wrap and foil
and store in the refrigerator for 2 days to improve flavor.
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