A Good 'Pound'ing!

When asked about our favorite childhood food memories, many of us talk about the homemade cakes that mom or grandmother baked.
When a special occasion called for a cake, a mix just wasn’t suitable. Pound cakes have been part of the southern table for so long that many Southerners believe we invented it, Damon Lee Fowler said in New Southern Baking.

Traditionally, the pound cake is made with a pound each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs and leavened only with the air that was beaten into the batter, or with separately beaten egg whites.

In Appalachian Home Cooking, author Mark Sohn attributes Hanna Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, dated 1747, as a possible original source of the pound cake recipe. Glasse’s recipe called for beating 12 eggs with the flour, butter and sugar by hand for one hour with a wooden spoon.

In The Blue Grass Cook Book by Minnie C. Fox, the pound cake recipe calls for 10 eggs. Instructions are: Cream 1 pound of butter, and add 1 pound of sugar, beating until very light. “Beat eggs till light, velvety, and thick. Add 2 wineglasses of liquor - any kind preferred, then flour and eggs alternately.”

A second recipe calls for 12 eggs and the instructions say to cream the butter and add the flour. “Beat the egg yolks, and add to them the sugar, then add to the butter and last the frothed whites. Beat well and flavor with brandy or whisky. Bake in a papered mould in a moderate oven. The old-fashioned way was to bake this recipe in teacups and ice them with white icing, and they were called ‘snowballs.’”

Here’s a recipe for classic old-style pound cake from Damon Lee Fowler’s New Southern Baking.

Classic old-style pound cake
1 pound unsalted butter, softened
1 pound (2 cups) sugar
Salt
8 large eggs
1 pound (about 3 1/2 cups) Southern soft-wheat flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 2 teaspoons bourbon
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 325 degrees. Butter and flour the pan. With a wooden spoon or a mixer fitted with a paddle or with rotary beaters, cream the butter, beating until it is light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar and a small pinch of salt and cream until very light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time alternating with the flour, a little at a time, until both are incorporated. Don’t overbeat it at this point. Finally stir in the heavy cream and liquid flavoring and spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Slip a table knife blade into the batter and run it through it in a back and forth S motion to take out any large air bubbles. Give the pan a couple of firm taps on the counter - just enough to bring any large air pockets to the surface.
Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, depending on the shape of your pan, until a straw inserted into the center comes out clean. Don’t open the oven door for the first 1 1/2 hours. Make sure the cake is completely done before taking it from the oven, but don’t overcook it or it will be dry and heavy. Cool the cake for 15 minutes in the pan, then turn it out onto a cake plate and let it cool completely before cutting it. Makes 1 round tube cake, or 2 loaf cakes. Makes 12 to 16 servings.