Home-cooking: Avocado Pound Cake Recipe a la Joy the Baker

Over the weekend I was finally able to meet up with J to bake the Avocado Pound Cake from a recipe J found from Joy the Baker‘s blog.  When he brought up the recipe/idea, I immediately said YES as I am a big, BIG fan of avocado.  I also invited G along for the ride as he’s a big avo-fan like me!  We were super excited to make it.

Take a looky at her site.  Her pictures are MUCH, MUCH better than mine.  Plus she’s the originator~

Here’s the recipe word-for-word:

Avocado Pound Cake

     makes 2 9x4x3-inch loaves

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• flesh of 1 1/2 ripe avocados, just over a cup to a cup and a half of avocado, mashed

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour two loaf pans and set aside.

2.  In a medium sized bowl, sift together flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda.  Set aside.  Set the four eggs out on the counter to come to room temperature while you beat the butter and sugar.

3.  In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter on medium speed until softened and pliable.  Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.  Add the avocado and beat another minute to incorporate.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is thoroughly mixed.

4.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating 1 minute after the addition of each egg.  Beat in vanilla extract.

5.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add half of the flour mixture, all of the buttermilk, and then the rest of the flour mixture.  Beat just until combined.

6.  Divide the dough between the two loaf pans (we didn’t have loaf pans so used one large rectangular cake pan) and place in the oven.  Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F.   Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean.  I checked my cakes every ten minutes or so after the 30 minute mark.

7.  Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

This was absolutely delicious.  The avocado were apparently used to replace some of the butter.  And the cake turned out super, super moist.  We didn’t think the avocado taste was too prominent though, but then the fruit itself doesn’t really lend a taste anyways, so we all agreed that next time we should cut up some chucks of avocado and put them in last so there are some chunks to bite into afterwards.

Personally I didn’t really care for the texture provided by the cornmeal.  But J and G appreciated it.  For me, it just kind of added a hard crunch to an otherwise crispy shell.

One thing I would change though was probably decrease the amount of sugar by one cup.  I think it would still be sweet enough and if anything, I could just eat it with some honey or sweetened whipped cream.

Which is how we ate it!  The grapefruit slices really cuts the sweetness and the whipped cream…well…it’s whipped cream what’s not to like??  G and I were both in awe when J whipped the cream up by hand with a simple wire whisk.  For reals.  He’s awesome =)

Wait until you see what ELSE we made…..