One pound of flour, one pound of butter, one pound of eggs and one pound of sugar. That’s what goes into a traditional pound cake. Well, people in the good old times can eat this cake without guilt.  The effort of creaming the butter and sugar together alone would earn them the right to enjoy this cake. But the current generation, with our hand & stand mixers, really can’t afford to make a cake with 450 gms of butter! So naturally, the recipe got modified to suit the modern times. Now most of the pound cakes just keep an approximate 1:1 ratio of the main ingredients.

I have never made a pound cake before, and I was very excited about it. This recipe is adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible and was the Sweet Punch challenge for the month of July. I followed the given recipe as such – no modification, no deviation.

Ingredients: 

3 tablespoons Milk

3 large Eggs

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

1 ½ cups sifted cake flour

¾ cup sugar

¾ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

13 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (184 gms)

Method: 

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F. Butter an 8″X 4″loaf pan, or any six cup loaf or fluted tube pan.
2. Lightly whisk together milk, eggs and vanilla in a medium bowl.
3. Place dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix on low speed for 30 seconds, until blended.
4. Add the butter and half the egg mixture, and mix until dry ingredients are moistened. On medium speed, beat for one minute. This will aerate and develop the cake’s structure. Scrape down sides.Add the remaining egg mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds between each addition. Scrape down sides.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan. Smooth surface with a spatula. Bake for 55-65 minutes (35-45 minutes if baking in a fluted tube pan), until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Let cake cool on a rack in the pan for 10 minuets before inverting onto a greased wire rack. If using a loaf pan, flip the cake over so the top is up.

This is my entry for Sweet Punch for the month of July and Celebrate Sweets – Cakes.