Personalize Your Pound Cake

Sandra Lee makes it to the big time on The Food Network by taking packaged food items and adding this or that to them to make it to suit her style.  Ah hem... I've been doing that long before Sandra Lee became a millionaire by tweaking a box of cake mix and other works.  Haven't you made a little change here or there and made it to suit your own tastes?

Here's one I tweak, and I don't make it the same way each time, either.  I chose Pound Cake because to make a Pound Cake from scratch requires more eggs than I want to use.

I'm adding French Vanilla Extract, Ginger, and Honey to the mix.  Ginger and Chocolate go well together.  I'm forgoing the chocolate chips in this cake today, since the holidays were extra chocolately here with Cadbury's, Hershey's, Terry's, etc.  and all those other sweets and treats...oh, yes.

I've taken about 3/4 cup of batter to a second bowl, added about 1 1/2 Heaping Teaspoons of Cocoa (not measuring teaspoons, just an ordinary silverware teaspoon) and stirred to blend.  Too much cocoa will make this too stiff, if that happens, add more plain batter.

   Plop the cocoa batter on top of the plain batter and then stir through with a fork to blend.  Bake. 

I didn't swirl the cocoa batter quite enough, but you get the idea.  This cake is moister than dry because of the honey, which doesn't affect the taste very much.  You can substitute food coloring if you'd rather not have a Marble Pound Cake, then you can have various colors.  This also works with layer cake mixes,  too.  I like the added French Vanilla Extract and also the Ginger combination.   If you try this, I hope you like it...Enjoy!  It's teatime again.