Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Drove Dad to Bozeman for his quarterly neurology appointment Tuesday. The MRI from January showed a finding that Dr. Varela had been monitoring — some additional white matter changes that are consistent with Parkinson's progression. She adjusted the medication again and discussed physical therapy for the gait, which she's been recommending for six months and which Dad has been accepting in theory without attending in practice. I said, in the car on the way home, that I thought he should try the physical therapy. He said: I'll think about it. I said: I know what that means. He said: I'll think about it. We left it there.

He started physical therapy the following Monday. I didn't say anything about it. He came home and had lunch and said it was fine. Mom raised her eyebrows at me over his shoulder. That was enough said between us.

I've been thinking about what it means to watch someone adapt to limitation — not just the physical adaptation but the interior one. The way a person decides what remains important when the energy for everything is no longer available. Dad has been doing this gradually, without announcements, shifting his attention to the things that matter most to him. The fence walk. The cattle at evening. The cribbage games with Mom. The mornings. He's choosing well. I try to notice that rather than only noticing what's diminishing.

Made a corn pudding Sunday with the last of the sweet corn from the garden. Creamed and baked with butter and egg, a little sugar, the final sweetness of August corn before the season ends. We ate it warm. Dad had two portions. Good corn, he said. It was.

The corn pudding was what we ate that Sunday, but it’s the pound cake I keep coming back to when I think about baking for Dad. Cream cheese pound cake is the kind of thing that asks nothing of you except patience—butter and sugar and eggs beaten slow, the batter heavy and golden before it even hits the oven. After a week of watching him quietly decide to try the physical therapy, of Mom’s eyebrows saying everything neither of us would, I wanted something dense and unhurried. Something you slice thick and eat warm, the way he’d have it, without fuss.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour 30 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 50 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs, at room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Prepare the pan. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or Bundt pan, tapping out the excess flour.
Cream the butter and cream cheese. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth and fluffy, about 3 to 4 minutes.
Add the sugar. Gradually add the sugar, beating on medium-high speed until light and creamy, about 4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add the eggs. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract.
Incorporate the flour. Whisk together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the flour mixture to the batter, mixing just until combined. Do not overmix.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 1 hour and 20 to 30 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
Cool. Let the cake rest in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn it out onto the rack to cool completely before slicing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cream Cheese Pound Cake — The Quiet Sweetness of What Remains