Week 21: Pound Cake

Pound Cake

This is most certainly on our list because Aubrey wanted to make it…I’m not a cake person even if pound cake isn’t like a typical cake. My only knowledge of pound cake is the store bought frozen Sara Lee version. I used to make a sweet hors d’oeuvres with it and the last time I made those Aubrey was probably 2 years old. So, she has absolutely no recollection of ever having eaten one. Thus, her desire to try one.

I figured the name had something to do with the amounts of at least one ingredient so I looked it up. From Wikipedia: “Pound cake is a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt mold. They are sometimes served either dusted with powdered sugar, lightly glazed, or with a coat of icing.” Now you know!

I also discovered, in the brief amount of research I conducted, that there are many different variations and flavors one could make. Aubrey wanted to make a traditional one and a chocolate version. We had to complete our baking on Wednesday of this week because we had a family wedding on Saturday. We hadn’t planned very well because we were also going to be using the oven for supper on Wednesday. Someday, I’ll have double ovens and baking two things at the same time will be easy.

We used Aubrey’s Cook’s Illustrated Cook Book and found both recipes (among others) in the same book. I found the recipes online with the chocolate one being very similar to the one in the book. Our only substitution this week was swapping a sugar substitute for the sugar. I found a new product called “Sola” and we tried it with both cakes. It has a combination of multiple sweeteners all in the same bag. We just didn’t think we would get the thick, rich, heavy cake using substitutions for butter and eggs.

Ingredients

The Best Pound Cake

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened (8 ounces)
• 1 ⅓ cups granulated sugar (9 ounces)
• 3 large eggs (5.25 ounces, without the shells)
• 3 large egg yolks (2 ounces)
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 ½ teaspoons water
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• 1 ½ cups cake flour (7 ounces)

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9-by-5-by-3 1/2-inch loaf pan (7 1/2-cup capacity) with vegetable shortening or spray. Line the bottom and sides of pan with parchment paper, (see illustrations below).
2. Beat butter in bowl of electric mixer set at medium-high speed until smooth and shiny, about 15 seconds. With machine still on, take about 30 seconds to sprinkle in sugar. Beat mixture until light, fluffy and almost white, 4 to 5 minutes, stopping mixer once or twice to scrape down sides of bowl.
3. Mix eggs, yolks, vanilla and water in a 2 cup glass measure with a pour spout, set in a pan of tepid water until mixture is about 70 degrees. With mixer set at medium-high speed, take 3 to 5 minutes to add egg mixture to butter/sugar mixture in a very slow, thin stream. Finally, beat in salt.
4. Remove bowl from mixer stand. Turn 1/2 cup flour into sieve or shaker; sprinkle it over batter. Fold gently with rubber spatula, scraping up from bottom of the bowl, until flour is incorporated. Repeat twice more, adding flour in 1/2-cup increments.
5. Scrape batter into prepared pan, smoothing top with a spatula or wooden spoon. Bake until cake needle or tester inserted into crack running along top comes out clean, 70 to 80 minutes. Let cake rest in pan for 5 minutes, then invert onto wire rack. Place second wire rack on cake bottom, then turn cake top side up. Cool to room temperature, remove and discard parchment, wrap cake in plastic, then in foil. Store cake at room temperature.

Chocolate Pound Cake (Reduced Sugar)

• 1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup (2¼ ounces) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 2½ ounces milk chocolate, chopped fine
• ⅓ cup boiling water
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup plus ⅓ cup (4⅓ ounces) Sucanat
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pan. Whisk flour and salt together in bowl. In separate bowl, combine cocoa and chocolate, pour boiling water over top, and stir until melted and smooth; let mixture cool for 5 minutes.
2. Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat cooled chocolate mixture, butter, Sucanat, and vanilla on medium-high speed until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until thoroughly combined, about 1 minute, scraping down bowl as needed.
3. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in 3 additions, scraping down bowl as needed, until just combined. Give batter final stir by hand (it may look curdled). Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 60 to 70 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking.
4. Let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan and let cool completely on wire rack, about 2 hours, before serving.

Our Experience

We prepared the pans ahead of time because we had two cakes to make and supper too. We have tried the Pam with flour but it doesn’t work very well (in our opinion) so we used shortening despite it not being a very healthy option.

Cutting the butter into chunks is pretty standard for so many things that are baked, we figure we should just cube the sticks before putting them in the freezer (we always have butter in the freezer).

You would never know this isn’t real sugar. We tend to use paper plates to measure out all of our ingredients since they make pouring ingredients really easy.

Once again, we used our paddle attachment for creaming the butter and sugar.

Separating eggs has also become a common activity in our house. Sometimes, if we know the unused parts of the egg aren’t going to get eaten, we will freeze them or, gasp, just throw them out.

The batter reminded us of our gingerbread batter (before the flour is added because then it is a dough 😉 ) It looked curdled but the cook book said that it would so we weren’t concerned about it not being smooth. Once we added the flour, it smoothed out nicely and looked like a batter ought to, albeit a little on the thick side.

We misjudged our time and ended up getting the batter done and ready to go right when we needed to get our supper into the oven. The pound cake batter was going to have to wait. We thought that this might change the final texture but we didn’t have another option. We decided to go ahead and make the chocolate batter while supper was in the oven since both cakes were to be baked at the same temperature.

There was a lot of chocolate for a small loaf of bread. We added the water and then added another 1/3 cup because it wasn’t a smooth, melty chocolate. Even with the additional water it was more like a chocolate paste. We thought that we might have done something wrong but pressed on hoping it would be good even if we had messed something up.

While they were baking, we noticed that a lot of butter had separated from the regular pound cake and was pooling around the edges (so, we have a fried pound cake). Just as we suspected, our wait time was probably causing some problems. Some we could see while baking and others that we would probably have to wait to see.

We took the cakes with us to the wedding and allowed some family members to try it…and help us get rid of it. 🙂

What we liked.

I’m not sure how many people tasted them, but, for the most part, they were liked. Most tasters mentioned that they were “good” (even if the traditional one didn’t look like a pound cake). The holes in the traditional cake were unexpected but they didn’t change the taste. The traditional cake had a nice vanilla flavor while the chocolate cake had a little bit of a dark chocolate flavor due to the Dutch process cocoa powder. Of the two, the chocolate was my favorite (which is weird). I liked it warmed up in the microwave for a few seconds and spread with a little butter (just what this less than healthy cake needed, more butter). In fact, I liked both of them with a little butter which made me think of it as a quick bread rather than a cake. The dense texture also added to that.

The cakes were relatively easy to assemble and didn’t take too long to bake, once the oven was available. If you like cross between a cake and a quick bread, this is the dessert for you.

The best thing about these cakes was finding out how we liked the Sola. I eat sugar substitutes all the time so I may not be the best judge, but I couldn’t taste the difference between sugar and Sola. All of the weird after tastes were minimized by using multiple kinds. The package also states that it caramelizes just like sugar so we will have to try that!

What we would change.

Obviously, we have the oven issue again…this time not enough ovens. Since we added twice the water than the recipe stated (chocolate) we might make that a permanent change. We aren’t really sure what it was supposed to be: liquid, paste, dry??

I will have to do a little research to see if we did something (besides letting it sit too long before baking) wrong with the traditional one since it didn’t fill the pan like the chocolate one did and then had the giant holes in it. Did we beat it too long? Not enough? Did we lose too much loft when we folded the flour in? Not sure. If Aubrey wants to try it again, I’d be game, but it isn’t going to be one of my “go to” recipes.

What we learned.

Once again, we learned our oven situation is not ideal. Oh, well! We also learned that we like the Sola and will be trying it in more recipes. (It is expensive…so, keep that in mind.) None of the techniques were new to us but we also learned that scheduling is just as important as the actual baking. We can’t bake dessert while supper is in the oven!

Until next week, Happy Baking!