Schwabian Cream Cheese Cake

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
• 1 1/2 cups butter
• 3 cups white sugar
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (6 oz roughly chopped and 2 oz shaved)
• 4 ounces chopped hazelnuts
• 1 can tart pie cherries
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• Directions
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• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F grease and flour a 10 inch round pan.
• In a large bowl, cream butter and cream cheese until smooth adding sugar gradually and beat until fluffy.
• Add eggs one at a time, beating until smooth with each addition. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well.  Add chopped hazelnuts and 2 ounces of shaved chocolate, lightly mix until batter looks peppered.
• Pour into a 10 inch round pan. Sprinkle can of drained tart pie cherries on top before baking.  Bake at 325 degrees F for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Check for doneness at 1 hour.
• Once cake is removed from oven and completely cooled, prepare a double boiler for remaining 6 oz of chocolate.  Drizzle melted chocolate over entire cake, however entire coverage of cake is not important.

This cake recipe is a variation of a cake that my German exchange mother would make.  When I was 18, I was a German exchange student.  First, my family hosted a girl at our house for a month and then in the summer I went to Germany for a month and stayed with her family.  This experience was very informative and opened up my mind different cultures.  I could talk about that forever, but I'll stick to the cake for now.

In Germany, German Chocolate cake is NOT like it is here in the USA. Here, German C.C. is chocolate cake mix with pecan and coconut frosting that looks like sick.  Gross! Real German chocolate cake is a white cake similar to pound cake with shaved chocolate, chopped hazelnuts and cherries with melted chocolate on top.  It's really nice and I love the contrast of flavors and textures that real German chocolate cake has.  

When I would make this cake for people here in the US I would say that I'm making German chocolate cake and how good it is and blah, blah, blah... People would be like, I don't like that kind of cake, or I don't like coconut.  I would have to explain the different between US and GER cakes... So I started calling the recipe that I have Schwabian Chocolate Cake because I lived in Schwabia when I was on exchange.  To make the original recipe that I had just follow the directions above and leave out the cream cheese and add another stick of butter.

I developed this recipe with the cream cheese because I want to submit it to Philadelphia and try to win a recipe contest. Wish me luck :)