Avocado Pound Cake

There was a glut of awesome cookbooks that came out in the last few months from food bloggers. Most notably, probably, was the six month pre-release of The Smitten Kitchen cookbook. Running the risk of being completely outcast from the entire food blog community, I’m going to come out and say it… if your book is released in damn near November, I’m not going to buy it in April. I have to pay rent in May after all.

I’m sure that book will be excellent if I can ever actually get my hands on it, but this post isn’t about that book. This post is about the lovely cookbook that Joy the Baker put out this spring. It has been sitting on my shelf for a few weeks now and I recently dove into it to find exactly what I would expect from Joy’s cookbook: awesome recipes like this Avocado Pound Cake, down-to-earth writing, and great photos.

Avocado Pound Cake

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3.58 from 28 votes

Author: Nick Evans

Servings: 12 Servings

Prep Time: 15 minutes minutes

Total Time: 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

This is a dense and sweet pound cake that has a wonderful flavor and texture thanks to lots of ripe avocado. It’s absolutely delicious!

Equipment

• 1 9×5 loaf pan

Ingredients 

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ cup yellow cornmeal
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 large avocados, mashed (about 1 cup + 2 tablespoons)
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• ¾ cup buttermilk

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Instructions

• NOTE: If you don’t have two 9×5 loaf pans, half this recipe. The batter needs to be baked immediately after mixing so you can’t hold it and bake a second cake after the first has baked.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter and flour your 9×5 pans.
• Whisk together dry ingredients: flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, baking soda.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer (or with a hand mixer) cream together the sugar and butter.
• Once butter and sugar are a soft consistency, mix in the mashed avocado.
• Then add one egg at a time, mixing between each egg. Also mix in vanilla.
• Add half of the dry ingredients to the bowl followed by the buttermilk. Then finish the batter with the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined, but try not to overmix the batter.
• Divide the batter between two loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Rotate pans and bake for another 20-25 minutes until a tester comes out clean from the center of the cakes.
• Remove cakes and let them cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the outside of the cake and remove it. Let it cool for another 10-15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Notes

Recipe from Joy the Baker cookbook.

Nutrition

Serving: 1slice | Calories: 555kcal | Carbohydrates: 92g | Protein: 7g | Fat: 19g | Saturated Fat: 9g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 7g | Trans Fat: 0.5g | Cholesterol: 87mg | Sodium: 329mg | Potassium: 263mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 60g | Vitamin A: 508IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 68mg | Iron: 2mg

Course: Breads, Desserts

Cuisine: American

Avocado Pound Cake

The Batter

This batter is a pretty standard cake batter with one obvious exception. it drastically cuts back on the amount of butter that would normally be in the recipe and replaces it with avocado. This substitution works awesomely because avocados are mostly fat, just like butter.

To start, go ahead and add all your dry ingredients, except the sugar, to a large bowl and whisk them together.

Then, in the bowl for a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar with the paddle attachment until the mixture is light and fluffy. This will take about five minutes to get the right consistency.

One note: If I were to make the recipe again, I think I might cut back on the sugar a bit, maybe by 1/2 cup. I thought the final cake was a tiny bit too sweet for my tastes. That said, I kept the original amount of sugar in the recipe I posted above just because it was really good and I’m notorious for thinking things are too sweet when they are actually just fine.

Back to the batter: this is what you are going for!

Then just toss in your avocado and keep mixing!

If you don’t have a stand mixer for this, you can 100% use a hand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together and then mix in the other stuff. No big deal.

Mix that together, then add the vanilla and one egg at a time.

Then add about half of your dry ingredients to the mix, followed by the buttermilk, then the last half of the dry ingredients.

You should be left with a thick batter that will taste delicious.

People (also the USDA) will tell you not to taste uncooked batter because of the raw eggs, but I can never help myself…

Then just pour the batter into TWO 9×5 loaf pans that have been lightly buttered and floured.

Baking the Cakes

Baking note: If you only have one loaf pan, half the above recipe. This batter needs to be baked as soon as it is mixed so the leavening ingredients can do their thing.

I made the mistake of baking half of the batter, then trying to bake the second half in the same pan 90 minutes later. My second cake came out flat and just not as good as the first one.

So if you don’t have two loaf pans then half the recipe.

Bake these suckers at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Rotate the pans and bake them for another 20-25 minutes until they are golden brown and a cake tester (or toothpick) comes out clean.

This was my finished Avocado Pound Cake.

Let the cakes cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then take them out.

Let them cool on a rack for a few minutes before slicing into them.

I found that these slices needed absolutely nothing. No butter or anything. They were just wonderful.

I just love the color in this cake and the avocado gives it a really rich and dense flavor.

Gotta love it.

If you’re a baker, check out Joy’s book. It has some great stuff.