A chocolate swirl pound cake

This decadent and gorgeous pound cake is arguably a difficult one to make if in fact you do not have a fancy kitchen replete with electric do it all batter mixer (you know those with the giant electric whisks etc) and all good things technology brings to kitchen.

But... you can pull this one off with (a) a food processor or (b) a combination of a small handheld whisk (electric is useful) and spatula.

Whatever you do, if you lack the most modern kitchen (which is most of us, I guess), you got to have a temperament (strength helps as well) to tough it out, when the dough gets tough on ya'. For the batter (more like a dough really) does get really tough. And yes, it does take some will power and intention, if I may add, to wrestle with flour and a dry paste of butter and sugar.

This recipe was inspired by the incredibly good looking pound cake recipe by the equally good looking Giada De Laurentiis.  But a few substitution, and the cake looks and tastes even better. 

1) I substituted the caramel + cream with chocolate (half a slab of bitter chocolate and 3-4 tbsf of hot chocolate + 1/2 cup of milk). The choc powder balances out the bitterness quite a bit, but keep it bitter (i.e. omit the hot chocolate) if you like it that way. By all means :)

2) If you don't like peanut butter, go for almond butter or chestnut puree. Should go remarkably with the bitter chocolate!

3) I changed to rubber spatula (you can use wood), after I creamed the butter and sugar. The handheld creamer just was not working for me. 

4) I avoided the parchment paper. I tend to serve from the pan, as you can see from the picture! 

5) I used regular vegetable oil to liberally coat the loaf pan. I don't use vegetable spray at all!

As I said, the recipe is gorgeous as such. But phenomenal with the substitutions, especially the chocolate (not with the spatula unfortunately).  I recommend this, even if there is a task involved.  The end results well reward the work. And you get to walk down the path of the gloriness if you serve this for dessert or for that matter any day of the week or year :)

Happy eating..and a bit less healthy eating on 'those days'