Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Food, Drink and Cooking Dessert!

Something that everyone can break their New Years resolutions with!
A recipe I learned from my mother and have memorized due to repeated bakings, an old classic and better than anything that comes from a store bought box!: Pound Cake

2 sticks of butter (1 cup)
3 cups sugar
3 cups AP flour
6 large eggs
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs 1 at a time making sure each is incorporated before you move onto the next. Add the vanilla, mom's recipe originally only called for 1 tsp but I really like vanilla and punched it up and even she says, my cake is better than hers . Incorporate the baking soda and flour slowly. Finally add the sour cream, you could add it earlier but for some reason I like the texture better when I add it at the end, I'm sure Alton Brown could explain why that is, I just know it works. Pour the mixture into a well greased bundt pan and cook at 325 F for 90 minutes. As ovens tend to vary I start checking mine at the hour mark, my current oven runs a bit hot so I only cook it for an hour and let it coast in the oven for the last 30 minutes with the oven turned off.

Variations:

Orange pound cake: add the zest of a couple of oranges to the wet ingredients at the beginning... and if you are real adventurous, add a couple tsp. of Grand Mariner, but if you do that, cut the vanilla back by that amount.

Lemon pound cake: as above only with lemon zest instead, also good with a glaze made from lemon juice and confectioners sugar, poke holes in the cake with a skewer so that rivulets of glaze permeate the cake.

Cake ala mode: cake, vanilla ice cream and any topping you like, me... I like Amaretto

Breakfast cake: slice of cake, cup of coffee, dip cake in coffee and consume

...it seems to me that the men of Reader Rant are coming up, lately, with more recipes than the woman folk.

I'm just sayin'...

safe topic