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Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

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Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

If you are looking for a change to the standard pound cake, this is the recipe for you. With just a few additions, you will have your guests drooling and begging for more. This cake not only has a beautiful presentation but is moist and flavorful.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake
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Strawberry Swirl Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 40 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups Butter, softened
  • 3 cups Sugar
  • 8 ounces Cream Cheese, softened
  • 6 Large Eggs
  • 3 Cups Plain flour, sifted
  • 1 Tsp. Almond extract
  • 1/2 Tsp. Vanilla extract
  • 2/3 cup Strawberry glaze
  • 1 6 inch wooden skewer

Instructions

  1. Cream butter and sugar til mixture is smooth. Add eggs one at the time mixing well. 

  2. Add cream cheese by fourths mixing well.

  3. Add eggs one at the time mixing well. 

  4. Add sifted flour in creamed mixture by 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well. 

  5. Once mixture has been thoroughly incorporated, transfer batter to tube cake pan.


  6. Add approximately 2 1/2 cups of batter to pan. 

  7. Add 8 drops of strawberry glaze to middle of batter. 

  8. Take wooden skewer and make a swirl pattern in the glaze.

  9. Top with remaining batter

  10.  Bake 330º  for approximately 1 hour and 10  minutes.

The ingredient that gives this cake it’s wonderful swirl is strawberry glaze. It likens to what is in a pie filling minus the strawberries. I found this in the produce section of the grocery store.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

There is also no liquid in this recipe. Cream cheese is in place of your milk.  Make sure your butter and cream cheese is softened at room temperature. This will make the creaming process much smoother.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

After you have creamed the sugar and butter together, mix in the cream cheese, small amounts at the time, mixing well between each addition. Now you may add your eggs, one at a time mixing well.

Sift the flour and add to your creamed mixture 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

The last items to be mixed in are the flavorings. If you do not have almond flavoring, you may use all vanilla. It is worth it to use almond, however, for it brings out quite a distinctive flavor in the cake.

In all my baking dishes, I stress pre-treating the pans with non-stick spray. But for my cakes, I have learned the hard way that the spray just doesn’t work good enough. I went back to good old Crisco, what my mother taught me to use many years ago. I haven’t had a cake stick since I started using it again! If you are using a bundt pan, be sure you get all the indentations filled. It only takes one little ungreased area to ruin a good cake by sticking in the pan.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

Now comes the fun part of this recipe. It reminds me of when I was a little girl making mud pies in the back yard. You really can be that carefree when using the glaze. Pour 1/3 of your cake batter into your cake pan. Then drop a heaping teaspoonful of glaze around eight areas. Once that is done, take a wooden skewer or the tip of a sharp knife and pull through your dots of glaze. I then swirled and pulled together as I went around. You can design as you wish.

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

Strawberry Swirl Pound Cake

Next, you will want to repeat this process. Gently pour another 1/3 of your batter over the first layer. It is almost like icing a cake. Gently take your spatula and pull batter to sides of pan. Place eight more dots of your glaze on this layer of batter. After you have swirled the glaze, pour the remaining batter on the top and gently spread it out.

Bake at 330º for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

It is a beautiful cake that is easy to whip up. It will impress your guests and family and will be one, I’m sure, that will become a favorite!

This post was written by Macy, the incredible mother & mother-in-law of the bloggers here at Puppies & Piña Coladas. She loves spending time with her daughters, granddoggies and grandkitty. She is a phenomenal southern cook and will be posting her secret recipes and amazing crafts regularly on the site.

Winter Slow Cooker Series #3 — Country Style Steak

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For our third slow cooker installment, I will be making one of my favorite southern dishes — Country Style Steak. There are different names to the way this meat is prepared — Chicken Fried, Fried Cubed Steak, Country Style. This meat is very inexpensive and not as tender as a t-bone, that is why there are so many variations in cooking it.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

I usually bread the steaks and brown them in a cast iron skillet before I slow cook them in the oven. But for this recipe, I am going to skip that step. They will be in the crock pot so long, any breading the meat would have on it would get cooked off.

In preparation for this dish I pat the pieces dry with a paper towel and then place them in a crock pot that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Trust me, clean up will be so much easier with the crock pot if you use the spray. I find the liners are more of an expense than they are worth.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

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Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 8 hours
Total Time 8 hours 20 minutes
Servings 8

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds cubed steak
  • 1 can Cream of Onion soup you can substitute other flavors such as cream of mushroom or cream or celery
  • 1 packet Onion dip mix
  • 1 Beef Broth
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • Seasoning salt and butter to taste

Instructions

  1. Spray slow cooker with non-stick spray. Place cubed steak in slow cooker. 

    In separate bowl, mix all the other ingredients well then pour over the steaks. Make sure liquid completely covers all the meat. If not, you may add water until it does.  

    Cook on High for 4 hours or Low for 8. Stir once while cooking.

    You may remove meat pieces and drain onion if desired and thicken liquid with a  teaspoon of cornstarch mixed in a small cup of warm water. When cornstarch is dissolved, whisk in the meat liquid until all is dissolved.


Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

The next step is to add the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl. I like doing this separate because it gets mixed better this way.  Once everything is mixed together, pour over your meat.  It is important that the meat is completely covered with the liquid. If it is not, it is quite alright to add water until all the meat is covered.  This is to insure it doesn’t dry out. You will see in the image below how a few of the pieces are poking out above the liquid. Those will be dried out if they aren’t under the water so make sure the get covered.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

In this image you will see everything is well covered and I have added a little more salt and, oops, you caught my favorite sneaky addition, butter. I don’t think you can ever have enough! These steaks were very lean and since I didn’t fry them, I thought they could use just a little.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

This needs to cook 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high. If you choose to make gravy, It will be easier to remove the meat and strain the onions from the liquid.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

Once the meat is done, I like to make gravy with the steak.  Since this liquid is a little watery, I will thicken it up with cornstarch. I like using it better than flour because it dissolves better.  I will take about a tablespoon and place it in roughly one cup of warm water. Once this has been dissolved I pour in the meat liquid.

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

Slow Cooker Country Style Steak

Using a whisk, stir the cornstarch mixture and liquid until they are blended. I then add the meat back in. Now all you need is rice or mashed potatoes. I had rice in the cupboard so rice it is.

This is an easy, affordable winter dish that is truly a comfort your family will grow to love.

Use up leftovers in this Slow Cooker Soup Recipe…

This post was written by Macy, the incredible mother & mother-in-law of the bloggers here at Puppies & Piña Coladas. She loves spending time with her daughters, granddoggies and grandkitty. She is a phenomenal southern cook and will be posting her secret recipes and amazing crafts regularly on the site.