Pound Cake

I had a meeting tonight which ended with a potluck dinner. It’s been a pretty busy week, and I had a very short window in which to make something to take for the dinner, and no time to shop for ingredients. So with only about a half an hour to put something together and only staples from which to make it, I decided to make a pound cake.

The recipe I use for pound cake comes from the cookbook the church I grew up in put out in the mid-70′s. My mom was the head of the committee that pulled it together, and I remember typing lots of recipes (on a typewriter – a manual typewriter, yet) for it when I was in college. It has some great classic recipes in it, including this pound cake recipe. The woman who submitted it was the meanest old lady I’ve ever known (seriously – she scared me to death), but she could really cook. As I recall, the original recipe lists the ingredients, and says something like “Mix all ingredients. Bake at 300 until done.” And I’ve pretty much done that, with not a whole lot of care about how I mixed all the ingredients, then dumping the mixture into whatever pan it would fit in, and baking it at 300 until it was done. And it was pretty good, although very dense and heavy.

However, probably 20 years ago, I came across an article on pound cakes in Southern Living magazine, which talked about how traditional pound cakes, which use no chemical leavening agents, should be mixed to ensure lightness and lift. The method they prescribed was to beat room temperature butter (and DO NOT let me hear you use the “m” word anywhere near a pound cake) for at least 2 minutes with a stand mixer at high speed. Then slowly add the sugar and beat for another 5-7 minutes at high speed until the mixture resembles whipped cream. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl as you need to, but don’t underbeat at this stage. You want the sugar to dissolve into the butter and to lose its graininess and you want to beat a lot of air into the mixture, because it’s this air that will give the cake its lightness.

You then beat in the eggs one by one, mixing in only until the yellow of the yolk disappears into the batter. Add the flavorings and the flour, again mixing only until the flour is lightly mixed in. Pour the batter into a greased and floured tube pan or loaf pan and bake at 300 for one hour.

Here are the ingredients:

1 cup of butter
1 2/3 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
2 cups flour

Today, I just happened to have a banana which was at the banana bread stage, so I peeled it, broke it up in pieces, and tossed it in just before the eggs, beating it with the butter and sugar until it was mixed in thoroughly. I’d never done that before, and I didn’t know how it would do, but it was great. This cake is never dry, but it made it even more moist, and brought a nice flavor along with it.

Sometimes, I’ll make a citrus glaze to go with this cake. I’ll squeeze the juice from a couple of oranges and a couple of lemons, mix them with some sugar and some butter, and cook it down until it’s syrupy. When the cake comes out of the oven, I’ll turn it out of the pan onto a plate, then use a skewer to poke holes in the top. Then I’ll slowly pour the glaze over the top, letting it soak into the holes. You can add a little Grand Marnier or Amaretto or Frangelico – or pretty much any liqueur – to the glaze too, if you like.

This pound cake is great just by itself. It’s also a nice delivery vehicle for sliced strawberries and whipped cream, or peaches, or ice cream and hot fudge sauce, or anything else you can think of to pour over it. It’s like the little black dress of desserts. You can dress it up, dress it down, and take it anywhere.

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