Pound Cake

I make about 20 pound cakes each Christmas season for gifts and started this morning. It's my mom's recipe and it always receives accolades from everyone who has eaten a slice.

Pound Cake
Cream 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 pound of butter
add
6 eggs
the juice and zest from 1/2 lemon
and
1 tsp of vanilla extract
sift 2 cups of flour and 1 tsp of baking powder and
add to combine.
Bake at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

Drew-
Love me some pound cake.
I'll print this out and try after the holidays.
Thanks.

Drew-
Love me some pound cake.
I'll print this out and try after the holidays.
Thanks.

I loved it too Winger, and I also saved it to file. Will likely try it before Christmas.

Drew-
Thanks.
Bill

I loved it too Winger, and I also saved it to file. Will likely try it before Christmas.

Me too.

Drew-
Is this baked in a 9"x13" cake pan as the photo seems to indicate or a loaf pan??
BP

Baked in a 5" x 9" x 2 1/2" loaf pan lined with parchment paper.
BTW, the beauty of this recipe is the dense crumb and beautiful, tasty, crunchy crust.

Drew

Here's a picture of one of several I baked today.

Thanks, Drew. That makes much more sense given the 1.5 hour bake time.

I adore pound cake. It's so versatile. I usually make a lemon pound cake in summer, and plain in winter. (The lemon gets fresh berries/sauce over it.)

Thanks for posting this recipe.

[Jenise]

I want that crust in the worst way.

When I was at Rice in the 1960's one of my friends brought a cake to the dorm and shared it. His aunt had made it and I enjoyed it so much I asked him for the recipe, which he eventually gave me. I hung onto it for a few years and when I got married I asked my wife if she could make it. Yes, I cook, but baking is not one of my strengths, and she's like a pro.

This cake is a "blonde" fruitcake. The recipe calls for various reconstituted dried fruits (dried apples etc.) and after baking the cake is soaked in white grape juice. Dan's aunt was a tee-totaler so no brandy or rum. I liked my wife's version even more.

So when she made it recently, and several friends asked for the recipe, I typed it up as an email and realized for the first time (we are talking 45 years) that it is a POUND cake, a pound cake with fruit in it. And a really tasty one, a buttermilk pound cake, which would probably be excellent with no fruit at all.

Anyone interested? I could rummage up the email and paste it in here... Of course Louise just uses whatever fruit is on hand and so this one was full of golden raisins and black currants and other stuff.

ALWAYS interested in new recipe's, Frank. BTW, I sometimes pierce the top of my pound cake a hundred or so times with a wooden skewer and drizzle in some Navan, a Cognac made with Madagascar vanilla. Really yum.

Drew

Dan Zehr’s Aunt’s Fruitcake Recipe

Buttermilk Pound Cake

1 cup shortening
2 ½ cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
½ tsp. soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1/8 tsp mace

Cream shortening and sugar in mixer. Add eggs, 1 at a time. Sift flour, baking powder, and soda together, in shortening + sugar + egg mixture. Add buttermilk.

Bake at 325 for 1 ½ hours.

- - - - -

For fruitcake, add 1 pkg. glazed fruit, raisins, chopped dates and dried apples.

1 pkg dried apples cooked enough to soften. Cool and cut in small pieces.

Cook these in 1 ½ cups molasses until tender.

Pour (white) grape juice over cake when done.

My grandmother always made pound cake the traditional way, with one pound each of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter.

-Paul W.

Paul, I wonder how that compares with the posted recipes -- I mean, it might work out to be the same thing if expressed in cups and pints and eggs. Wonder if Google has conversion factors?

One pound of extra large eggs = 8 eggs

One pound of flour = 3 3/4 cups (sifted maybe 4)

One pound of sugar = 2 1/4 cups

One pound of butter = 4 sticks, one box.

One pound of milk = 2 cups or one pint.

The world around, a pint's a pound,
except where we let Rick list 'em and they use the Metric System.

I want that crust in the worst way.

Come to ATX. I'll give you a crust you won't soon forget.
BTW, I once made a pound cake in the old fashioned way:
1# Butter
1# Eggs
1# Sugar
1# Flour
Just for kicks I added a pound of cream. I toasted the slices in butter in a skillet. It was fat fun.

rwj

We tried Drew's Pound Cake over the Christmas Holiday and it was superb!!
I liked it just fine unadorned, but NJ felt the need to add a few flourishes of raspberries and chocolate. Here's a few photos:

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