white chocolate-pumpkin pound cake

The winner of the Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented is Liz of Little Bitty Bakes. Congrats Liz, this is a stellar cookbook!! I wish I had more to give away, I really do. I had so many comments, and I could tell you all wanted to win this. Let's do more giveaways....I will make this happen. Promise.
As for this pound cake, well it's interesting.

As I've stated before I am not a huge pumpkin fan. So if you like the taste of pumpkin this maybe be the loaf for you--it's very pumpkin-ey if that's a word. The white chocolate middle is very delicate, not overly sweet at all; overall loaf is very mild, hence the reason I put the nutella-cream cheese frosting on there. Lately I've been really drawn to nutella.....have you seen those super sized jars of it they sell in the grocery stores? I got one! Seriously. What have you baked with Nutella? Possibilities are endless aren't they? Sorry the photo isn't that bright...we've had nothing but rain and dark gloomy days here on cape cod.

white chocolate-pumpkin pound cake
by dawn finicane
print recipe

3 large eggs and 2 egg yolks, room temp
2 ¼ cup all purpose flour
¾ cup high quality white chocolate (like Valrhona)
1 stick of salted butter, melted
¾ cup white sugar
1 huge pinch of sea salt
A couple dashes of cinnamon
½ can of pumpkin puree (pure pumpkin not flavored)
2 TB canola oil
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Oil or butter and dust with flour a rectangular pound cake pan.
Melt the butter, let it cool slightly.
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon; then sift and set aside.
Mix the sugar, canola oil and eggs with stand mixer until well combined.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in batches (of three) until just combined. Don’t over mix.
Separate the batter in 2/3 and 1/3. We are going to add the pumpkin puree to the 2/3 batter by just folding it in; we don’t want to over mix at this point.

Place the white chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water and let simmer until the chocolate is melted. Add this melted chocolate to the 1/3 batter. You have to work quickly as the white chocolate does not stay melted for long.
Pour half the pumpkin batter into the pan, then pour in the white chocolate batter making sure to keep this batter in the middle, not to let it go to the sides so the nice swirl stays even in the middle. Recipe by dawn Finicane of vanillakitchen.blogspot.com Pour the remaining pumpkin batter on the top. You may have to use your fingers to push the batter down, as the batter is quite thick.
Bake for about 40-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. (mine was done at the 40 minute mark). Remove from the oven. Let cool before frosting.
If you wish to frost this (some say it was good without the frosting) all I did was add a block of 8 ounces of room temp cream cheese to about ½ (or more) of Nutella. Mix really well and frost.