Saturday, February 25, 2012

Saturday Oven Lovin'

I tried making my first Pound Cake on Thursday morning.  I looked up recipes in the old standby's (Joy of Cooking and BH&G Cook Book) as well as online.  The BH&G recipe called for shortening instead of butter; I just didn't trust a pound cake recipe that used shortening instead of butter.  And I though that it was called a "Pound" cake because there was like a whole pound of every major ingredient in it, and many of the recipes did not adhere to this. 

So I did a little web searching and found this one:

3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar

2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup buttermilk

325 degree oven for an hour and ten minutes.


Pound of sugar, check.  Pound of butter, check.  Crapload of eggs, check.  Nothing else fancy or frilly or "new and improved" in order to make the good old version of a pound cake more "modern".   Sounded good to me.


The batter itself was beater-lick'n good so I was hoping for an exceptional baked version.


Never having made a pound cake before (as if I were living on Mars or something where I didn't have access to butter and eggs), I wasn't sure how the batter was supposed to look like, but figured it was going to be thicker than normal cake mix.  Which it was.


The cake itself was very dense, like a pound cake.  And oh so buttery.  And oh so good.  And oh so how many extra layers of cellulite would you like on your thighs, thank you very much.


But the consistency just wasn't right.  Although it was a dense cake, it still had a crumb-like texture.  Not
crumbly by any means, but it was definitely not what I would consider a pound cake kind'a consistency.  Unless I've been so used to eating commercially produced pound cakes that I didn't know what an actual honest to goodness real homemade cake was supposed to be like.

Did I beat the batter too much?  Too little?  Did I not have all my ingredients exactly at 70 degrees?  Did I fail to sift the dry ingredients enough?  


I guess I'll not know until I try out another recipe.  But in the meantime, we're enjoying every slice of my first-ever pound cake.


Got a recipe you'd like to share with the blogosphere?  Then go over to Tiny Gardener's blog and share your recipe (possibly for a pound cake???) with her.

6 comments:

  1. 1 lb of butter PLUS buttermilk - mmmmm, I'll be right over! LOL I'm sure you will get it just right, in the meantime that one above looks like a fantastic starting trophy! Enjoy!

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  2. I think you are just used to the stinkin' commercially produced pound cake they sell next to the strawberries in the produce department at the grocery store...the consistency reminds me of Twinkies for Pete's sake!! If you liked the taste, I'm sure it was just right! :)
    I haven't made a pound cake in quite awhile, thanks for the reminder!

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  3. It looks yummy! But to be sure your pound cake is really right, I think it would be a good idea if you send a finished pound cake to all of us for a taste test! :-)

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  4. I looks wonderful. You need to show us a slice up close to check the crumb. I have a good recipe that I use but yours looks super to me.

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  5. You've got one up on me, Girlie! I've never made a pound cake in a bundt pan. Fancy-schmancy! Mine just gets plopped in a loaf pan. I always make mine with lemon flavoring . . . hmmmm, maybe that's why it's called Lemon Pound Cake? Every now and then I make my daughter's favorite treat. A Lemon Pound Cake, slice it up, wrap each piece individually and put it in the freezer. She LOVES to grab a frozen piece and gobble it down. :o]

    Yours does look wonderful. I'm with gld . . . show us a slice up close to check the crumb. And so we can smell it. And maybe lick the screen once or twice.

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  6. I think it's the milk that took away the dense texture of pound cake. Use the recipe in the Marion Cunningham edition of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Every recipe in that book just works.
    http://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-boston-cooking-school-cook-book-1896-by-marion-cunningham-fannie-merritt-farmer/251977/#isbn=0553568817

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