Just Throw in a Pound of Everything

It is National Pound Cake Day!  And I believe that Pound Cake should be celebrated.  Because it is delicious.  It is not a complicated recipe, but it works.  Now, pound cake is called pound cake because way back when the recipe called for a pound each of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs.  That sounds like a heavy cake.  The one I made to celebrate was not quite so heavy.

There are a bajillion recipes for pound cake out there.  How do you choose which one to make?  I have no idea.  I didn't want a lemon one or an iced one or anything like that.  So, I just browed around until I found one that seemed like it would be close to the traditional pound cake I always think of when I think of pound cake.  I ended up choosing basically at random and settled on the one from Once Upon a Chef, hoping it was really the Perfect Pound Cake it claimed to be.  

Putting it together is as simple as the ingredients.  You do need cake flour for this one.  I happened to have had it in the house, so I was happy to have a use for it.  Everything else is stuff most people have in the house all the time - eggs, milk, butter and such.

You whisk the wet ingredients together.  You put the dry ingredients in the mixer.  I was surprised that I was told to put the flour in the mixer along with the sugar and before the butter.  I am used to mixing the sugar and butter together first.  But I follow the directions exactly the first time I do any recipe.  And it all worked out, so it shows you how much I know about baking even thought I do it all the time.  

Then you add the butter and wet ingredients and you are all done.  All you have left to do is pour it into a greased and floured pan and put it in the over for almost an hour.  

What you get is a buttery, slightly dense (as pound cake should be), delicious treat.  Very much like the pound cake I had in mind, that I remembered from those ones that we got from the store in an aluminum tray when I was a kid.

It may not be perfect but it is close.