Grubbin' Pugs: Grapefruit Pound Cake

Ever since I started cooking a few years ago, I always try to bake something special for the holidays. I always bake my snowball cookies and dark chocolate cookies, due to the demands of various family members, but I like to try something new for the big dessert after dinner. This year I found one that everyone loved! Well, all the grownups loved it but the kids found the icing too sweetly tart. The icing is a love it or hate it kind of thing because that's where the cake gets a lot of its grapefruit flavor and some might think it's either too tart or too sweet. Personally I think the icing and the cake have to go together and so did all the grownup members of my family! Some of us don't even love grapefruit, but we all thoroughly enjoyed the cake. So if grapefruit isn't your thing normally, still give this cake a try! I mean who doesn't love a nice, dense pound cake? A great alternative from the usual pies this season or a heavy chocolatey dessert!

Servings: Hm hard to say. I cooked mine in a 9-inch pan and 7 of us had slices and we ate a little more than half the cake so maybe 12-16 servings depending on the size of the slices.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour (lightly spooned into measuring cups and leveled with knife)
1 teaspoon baking powder
5/8 teaspoon salt, divided
1 2/3 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons grapefruit rind, grated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup 2% reduced fat milk
1/2 cup grapefruit juice
1 cup powdered sugar
Baking spray or butter/oil for pan and dusting of flour

Instructions:

Cake:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Coat pan with baking spray, butter, or oil and lightly dust with flour.

Pound cake should normally be cooked in a tube pan (the original recipe called for a 10-inch tube pan) as that type of pan helps to ensure the cake is evenly cooked, but since I didn't have one and didn't want to buy one for this cake I used my regular 9x2 cake pan and that worked pretty well. I lined the bottom with parchment paper to help ease removal from pan later. You can also use two loaf pans for this instead. Pound cake rises a lot so make sure you pick a big enough pan with enough height so you don't risk overflow.

Mix together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl add 1 2/3 cup granulated sugar, 6 tbsps butter, and 8 oz cream cheese. Using a mixer beat at high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy.
Add 2 large eggs to the mixture, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Beat in 1/4 cup canola oil, 2 tbsps grapefruit rind, and 1/2 tsp vanilla.
Alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk to the batter, starting and ending with the flour mixture. The batter should be smooth and thick at the end.
Pour or spoon the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. If you insert a toothpick in the center it should come out mostly clean with moist crumbs on it.
Cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes then remove cake from pan and cool completely on rack.

Icing:

Bring 1/2 cup grapefruit juice to boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Continue cooking for a few minutes until the grapefruit juice is reduced to about 3-4 tablespoons.
Stir in 1 cup powdered sugar, and 1/8 tsp salt until the icing is thick and smooth.
Either drizzle over cake or you can do what I did was to use a knife to evenly spread the icing on top of the cake.

Now enjoy! And here are some photos!

Beginning of course, with some begging pugs.

I made the cake the night before so that on Christmas I had everything ready to go. I love my cake carrier. I can bring a cake with icing without having to worry about pug hairs flying into them when driving!