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Pound Cake


lizzie

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I have been playing around with a lot of different pound cake and pound cake-like recipes and curious of others favorites. I love that these are generally not fussy to make and a simple glaze, if any used, is a perfect icing. I made the lemon pound cake from the Barefoot Contessa Parties book this weekend and everyone loved it - so much lemon flavor. I love tart and this was perfectly tart. It was a bit more crumbly than I expected - the recipe called for baking it 45 minutes to an hour so I guessed at just over 45 minutes when the toothpick seemed clean. I also have been trying different nutella cakes, from random web sites. One did not have enough flavor and the second one, with a thick ribbon of nutella, was even too much for my daughter whose veins run thick with the stuff. Any favorites among the don rockwell crowd?

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Favorites include the lemon from Bouchon which I imagine is in the cookbook and would be amazing w Meyer lemon or blood orange, simple syrup made from the fruit poured through holes poked in the surface while both (cake & syrup) still warm.

Sour cream marble--don't have recipe.

Suzanne Goin has a great little story about the power of description in selling menu items in her cookbook. Recipe from Lucques: Pastel vasco [toasted in wood-burning oven] with blackberry compote and poured cream.

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Here's my mother's recipe for buttermilk pound cake. It's much lighter than pound cakes usually are, so it might not be what you want, but it's a good cake anyway. I especially like it with strawberries and whipped cream. Let me know if the instructions are too abbreviated and you need clarification.

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Buttermilk Pound Cake

1 c butter

2 c sugar

4 eggs

1 t vanilla

1 t lemon zest

3 c sifted flour

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 c buttermilk

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and lemon zest. Sift the flour with the other dry ingredients, and mix into the batter alternately with the buttermilk.

Bake in a greased and floured 9x13 pan at 350ºF for 40 minutes.

for a smaller cake:

Use an 8" square pan for a half-recipe. Bakes in about 33 minutes.

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Here's my mother's recipe for buttermilk pound cake. <snip>

It's interesting that she called this a pound cake. Where I grew up, this is a "1,2,3,4" cake, which is also a basic cake formula. A cup of butter, two of sugar, three of flour, four eggs, then a cup of liquid and whatever flavoring you wanted. Most in my Grandmother's generation used self-rising flour, so the salt and leaveners would be left out.

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It's interesting that she called this a pound cake. Where I grew up, this is a "1,2,3,4" cake, which is also a basic cake formula.

I'm sure you're right, and it doesn't surprise me that she mis-named it, but that's another story. Still, it's a nice cake, reliably easy to make, good texture. Flavor is better the next day.

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Today is my beautiful daughter Elizabeth's 13th birthday & I'm baking some pound cakes. I can't count how many times I've made this cake (I think I've brought it to every picnic I've attended), & now Lizzy bakes it too-she made a gluten free version Monday for her theater teacher's bday. We're going out for Thai tonight for bday dinner, packing a special veggie lunch for a field trip tomorrow (she wants Caesar salad, shrimp, hb eggs, carrots, & poundcake). I know most of you don't know her, unless you've met her at picnics, & I don't want to sound sappy, but she (& her brother) have brought an unexpected joy & surprise to my life, & her birthday is definitely a celebration for me...

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Today is my beautiful daughter Elizabeth's 13th birthday & I'm baking some pound cakes. I can't count how many times I've made this cake (I think I've brought it to every picnic I've attended), & now Lizzy bakes it too-she made a gluten free version Monday for her theater teacher's bday. We're going out for Thai tonight for bday dinner, packing a special veggie lunch for a field trip tomorrow (she wants Caesar salad, shrimp, hb eggs, carrots, & poundcake). I know most of you don't know her, unless you've met her at picnics, & I don't want to sound sappy, but she (& her brother) have brought an unexpected joy & surprise to my life, & her birthday is definitely a celebration for me...

I know I've seen your daughter, but I don't know that I've met her. I hope she's having a great birthday.

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Right now I've got a lemon pound cake in the oven.  It's a NY Times recipe I haven't made in a long time.  I think I'm going to omit the glaze from it, since we're trying to watch sugar intake and I'm planning on serving it with sour cherry compote.  The cherries won't permeate the cake the way a glaze would, but will certainly add to the sugar content.

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I am a big fan of Ina Garten's honey vanilla pound cake, but I made it a week or two ago and could not for the life of me get it to cook through.  I don't mind a little underdone, but this was too ooey gooey for even my taste.  The only thing different I did this time was use a glass loaf pan instead of nonstick - thought I had both but tore the doggone kitchen apart and only came up with the Pyrex).  Could that be the issue?

The end pieces that were done throughout were absolutely marvelous.  :)

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I know you moved fairly recently.  Is this the first time making a pound cake in this oven?  Might be you need a calibration.

And much less likely, but worth checking, years ago, I had something that didn't cook through, and it turns out one of my elements burned out sometime during the cooking process.

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It was my first time making the pound cake in this oven, yes.  But, we've actually been in our place for a year and a half, and the oven seems to run pretty consistently.  I'm going to attempt it again and add some time - and I also re-purchased a nonstick loaf pan, just in case!

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