Mini Cream Cheese Pound Cakes

​Sometimes I just do things the hard way.  (Most of the time actually.)  I found this recipe for a Cream Cheese Coffee Cake in one of my Cook's Illustrated magazines.  According to the way the recipe is written, the cake is supposed to be baked in a 10 tube pan and then cut into slices.  In retrospect - that would have been waaaay easier.  For some reason, I decided to turn my coffee cake into individual mini coffee cakes.  The problem with that is that I only have 1 mini bundt pan.  It went something like this: bake, cool, wash, bake, cool, wash, bake, cool, wash, bake, cool, wash.)  

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake
Lemon Sugar - Almond Topping
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Cake
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/8 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
10 Tablespoons butter
1 cup + 7 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon zest
juice from 1 lemon 
4 eggs
5 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups sour cream 
8 ounces cream cheese

​For topping:  Stir together sugar and lemon zest.  Stir in almonds.

​For cake:  Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Beat butter and 1 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar in mixer until light and fluffy.

​Add eggs, one at a time.  Add 4 teaspoons vanilla.

​Add dry ingredients alternating with sour cream.

​Reserve 1 1/4 cups batter.  Spoon a teaspoonful of topping into the bottom of greased mini bundt pan.

Spoon reserved batter over topping.
​

​Beat cream cheese, 5 Tablespoons sugar, lemon juice and 1 teaspoon vanilla.  Add 1/4 cup reserved batter.

​Spoon cheese filling over batter.  Use a toothpick to swirl filling into batter.   

​Spoon remaining batter on top of filling.

​Bake 25 minutes.  Cool in pan 10 minutes.

​Remove from pan and cool on wire racks.  

​At the end of the day ... the mini coffee cakes were totally worth the extra effort.  There's no doubt in my mind that they are more time consuming than a tube pan coffee cake but sometimes a little extra time pays off in the end.  These cute little breakfast treats area super cute and really delicious.  (especially the lemon - almond topping) 

Ciao!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe