fallen almond pound cake

...or tracy's birthday cake. perfect for a midweek treat.

right now i have 97 cake and 78 cupcake recipes saved in my google reader. yea, that's right, over 150 cake recipes that have interested me so much that i have tagged them to make later. insane? yes. so when birthdays or dinner parties come up and i'm given the chance to make a cake, i take it. since i had leftover blackberry sauce in my refrigerator from the last sweet treat i made and i didn't have a lot of time to fuss around with a cake since tracy's birthday fell on a weekday, this almond cake jumped to the top of my list.

and boy, did it go over well. the cake is perfect. moist, light, and perfectly almondy. i thought jason was going to cry when i told him he couldn't have a piece of the first cake when i took it out of the oven. but you should have seen the look on his face when i brought out the second - yes, this recipe makes two cakes - cake from the oven and told him it was for us and to eat as much as he wanted. the man went nuts. literally.

one word of warning about the blackberry sauce: double it, triple it if you can. it's that good. so much so that someone - i won't name names - wanted to drink it with a straw.

fallen almond pound cake
adapted from sophistimom
45 minutes, makes two eight inch round cakes, each serves 8-12

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
8 ounce package of cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour or 1/2 cup almonds, finely ground in a food processor
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
blackberry sauce

1. preheat oven to 325F. grease two 8 inch cake pans.
2. with a mixer, cream together butter and cream cheese. add sugar and mix until smooth. add eggs one at a time, mixing well until each one is incorporated. mix in vanilla and almond extracts.
3. in a separate bowl, whisk together flour, almond flour, baking powder, and salt. with the mixer running (or add in batches, if it's easier), slowly add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.
4. distribute the batter evenly between the two pans and bake about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. let cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 20 minutes.
5. very carefully invert the cake onto your hand and flip back onto the wire rack. if you flip the cake onto the rack directly, the grid or lines of your rack will show up on the cake. it can be done, it just won't be as pretty.
6. serve with blackberry sauce.

check out more sweets at sweets for a saturday and sweet tooth friday!