Make your cake and eat it, too: Part 3

Pound cake

The original recipe for pound cake, as we discovered in this week’s episode, calls for a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Not only does that make an absolutely gargantuan amount of batter, but it is also very expensive - it uses A LOT of eggs and A LOT of butter. Thankfully, the ratio is the thing: all we have to do to get a smaller, more manageable final result, is to reduce our amounts. If you want a crowd-sized, historically accurate cake, dear reader, go for broke and use a pound each of every ingredient. Otherwise, you’ll need the following:

Ingredients

1 c butter, softened, plus butter for the cake pan
1 c sugar
5 eggs
1 c flour, plus flour for the cake pan

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees C. Butter and flour two 13x9 cake tins, or an equivalent-sized Bundt pan.
In a large bowl, cream your butter and sugar together until they are light and creamy. Because there are no chemical leaveners in this recipe, you must cream your butter and sugar together very well, until all the sugar has dissolved (you can test this by pinching a bit of the mixture between your fingers and feeling for sugar granules - when fully mixed, it should feel smooth). When properly creamed, the mixture will also be a paler colour, because of all the air you’ve added in.
Mix in your eggs, one at a time, and stir together to combine.
Finally, add in your flour, in two or three additions to make mixing easier and less messy, until just combined. Be careful not to over-mix your batter; that will make it tough.
Divide your batter evenly between your two pans (a scale can help with this, but you can also eyeball it) and smooth the tops with a spatula.
Bake in your preheated oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the cakes comes out clean. If you notice that your cakes are browning too quickly, tent them with some aluminium foil.
Allow your baked cakes to rest in the pans, about 15-20 minutes, and then transfer to a baking rack to cool completely. Serve in slices on its own, or pair this flexible multi-tasker with fruit, ice-cream, a simple powdered sugar glaze - anything that makes your heart happy!

Now, there are many ways to add other flavours to this recipe - lemon zest for a lemon pound cake, vanilla extract for a vanilla version, and any sort of flavoured frosting (chocolate for instance) to up the tasty factor, but there is also something really charming and satisfying about the original. Enjoy!