Cake bakers--help me please? (Cream cheese)

So tomorrow is Mr. Kane's 40th birthday, and I'm going to bake him a cake. I've baked plenty of cakes, of course, but in this one I'm going a bit...off-road, as it were.

I want to make a key lime cake.

Searching for recipes turns up a bunch that used box cake mix and Jello powder, which, no way. I have a bottle of pure lime oil (I used the lemon oil to make the most awesome lemon bundt cake ever last week) and I figure I can add a Tbsp or so of lemon juice to make up for the tartness lost by not using key limes, which can't be found here.

Anyway. I have found a recipe that uses lime juice, and I'm comfortable substituting the oil etc. That's not my question.

My question is...it occurred to me that adding some cream cheese to the batter might give the cake a more "key lime pie" type of flavor, as opposed to just "key lime." That tangy sweetness, if you know what I mean. But the only recipes I can find for cake with cream cheese are pound cakes or bundt cakes, which of course, I don't want to do either of those; I'm doing a triple-layer cake with cream cheese frosting.

I'm figuring I'll simply sub cream cheese for some of the butter. Anyone have any thoughts on the workability of this?

How about using sweetened condensed milk? I may use it in the frosting instead of regular whole milk.


Any tips, advice, thoughts would be welcome--I am going to grab my cookbooks and have a look-through, but it would be great to get opinions etc. Hubs is a Florida boy, and I'd love to give him something at least nicely reminiscent of key lime pie. (Plus I love lime anything, so...) But I don't want to make a pie because, you know, birthday pie? I have candles and everything! Picture number candles stuck in a gelatinous pie. No.

Help me AW bakers!

Thanks, guys. You don't think subbing, say, 1/4 cup of the butter (total butter called for is 1 C.) would be okay without making the cake too heavy?

I thought that might be the case, sigh, but glad it's confirmed. That super-dense pound cake texture is what I'm hoping to avoid, so...

(I am going to do a cream cheese frosting, yeah, I was just hoping to get more flavor into the cake itself, too, you know?)

Nope, I need cake. Thanks, though!

Yeah, I have a recipe and everything, I'm just trying to see if I can't tweak it a little to make it, like, key lime PIE cake, as opposed to just key lime cake, if you know what I mean.

For me, playing with the recipe and seeing if I can customize it a little is the best part, you know? But I've never made a substitution like this, so I figured I'd ask for some advice.

RichardGarfinkle said:

What are you using for rising agent?

Click to expand...

Actually, the recipe calls for baking soda AND baking powder: 1 1/2 t powder and 1/2 t soda.

It uses regular flour, not even cake flour. Which is fine with me since you can't get regular cake flour here, only self-rising sponge flour. I sub it for cake flour with no problems by simply eliminating or cutting down the leavener, but it still sucks. So I'm glad I don't have to mess around with that here and can use regular flour.


The recipe also uses 1 C buttermilk, so I assume the extra baking soda will react nicely with that, and the acid in the citrus.

I've found that doubling up by using both baking powder and folded in whipped egg whites or eggs whipped to the ribbon then whipped egg whites can counter a lot of heaviness.

Click to expand...

Oooh, that's an idea. I do that with my peanut butter cake; it's a fairly heavy, dense cake that doesn't rise much so I beat the eggs until they reach that sort of "custardy" look, if you know what I mean, and that definitely added to the rise.

Failing that, a genoise with the key lime juice whipped in could work, but it would be a much lighter and dryer cake.

Click to expand...

Yeah, sigh, I'm hoping for very tender & moist.


Thanks again, everyone, this is really helpful. I'm going to give my books a look-over after dinner, too.

callalily61 said:

Stacia--what about this:

Key lime cake

Click to expand...

Yep, saw that one. I'm planning to use this one, which is very similar but makes more cake.