Cream Cheese Pound Cake with a Pumpkin Streusel Swirl

Recipes with long ingredient lists scare me.

Like, really scare me. I feel like I can't even enjoy baking when it calls for 7,000 ingredients followed by another 7 gazillion steps.

However, when I stumbled upon this recipe at willowbirdbaking.com, I felt like I didn't have a choice BUT to make it. C'mon, when is anything with 3 cups of sugar and a cup and a half of butter a BAD thing!?

P.S: Anyone attempting to leave a comment on this post saying "ya but it's bad for your diet" just stop it, stop it now.

Maybe after this pumpkin post I'll take a full week long hiatus from anything pumpkin because, 1. Nothing following will live up to this recipe and 2. Hello, September on my blog, meet pumpkin... BOOM!

Plus I'm ooober excited about Halloween right around the corner (does my blog give you a hint of my obsessive tendencies yet?)

So, I'm sure my blog for the next month will be spewing out green goo, blood, spiders and everything Haunted! Is anyone else but me excited about Halloween Wars on Food Network!? Scratch that, the word spew isn't necessarily a bench-marker for delicious on a food blog huh?

Anyways, my rant is finished... This recipe is about to go on for a minute, but please stick with me. It's worth it people!

For the Pumpkin Pie Filling:
6 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/8 cup sugar
1/2 cup overflowing with pumpkin puree
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

For the Pecan Streusel:
1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons cold butter
1 cup chopped pecans, roasted

For the Cream Cheese Pound Cake:
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Toast Pecans: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread pecans out on a baking sheet and bake for 4-6 minutes until fragrant and toasty. Spread on a plate to cool. Keep the oven on for the cake.

Make the filling: In your stand mixer or with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy and smooth. Add in the pumpkin puree, egg, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and pumpkin pie spice. Mix until combined. Set in the fridge while you make everything else.

Make the Streusel: Combine the flour and brown sugar in a medium bowl. Using fairy like hands, or a pastry cutter will do, cut in the butter until pea sized and crumbly. Add 1/2 cup of the toasted pecans.

Make the pound cake: Beat the butter and cream cheese on medium speed in your stand mixer (make sure to rinse out if you used this for the filling). Gradually add in the sugar and beat for 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at time, just until no yellow is showing. Stir in the vanilla. Whisk the flour and salt in a large bowl and add into the batter in multiple additions, scraping down the sides as necessary until fully mixed.

Grease a Bundt pan with cooking spray and flour.
Dollop 1/3 of the batter into the greased pan and use a spatula to smooth out evenly and up against the sides to make level.
Dump the Streusel mixture into the pumpkin filling and gently mix, you do not need it to be fully combined. Dollop big spoonfuls of the pumpkin mixture onto the batter in your Bundt pan and swirl with a wooden skewer. Top this layer with another third of cream cheese batter, then follow again with the remaining pumpkin filling. Using large spoonfuls and swirling with the skewer. Top with the final third of batter and smooth out evenly.
Fill an oven proof pot with 2 cups of water and place in the warm oven. Place the cake beside it and bake for an hour and a half. Start checking the cake early, if the top starts to get too browned cover with aluminum foil.
Let the cake cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes before running the edges with a knife and inverting on a serving dish.
I chose to eat mine with caramel topping and sprinkled it with the toasted pecans, but feel free to make an icing for this!

Doesn't this picture make you feel like you're in a tunnel of cake?? MMMMM.... 

This cake is everything right in the world. If a dense, moist, cream cheese cake made out with pumpkin pie... Their spit would be this cake...ok, gross. Enjoy everyone!