Pound cake is a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt mold. They are sometimes served either dusted with powdered sugar, lightly glazed, or with a coat of icing.
Pound Cakes are so named because originally they were made with one pound of butter, one pound of sugar, one pound of eggs, and one pound of flour. In France, a Pound Cake goes by the name Quatre Quarts, which means four quarters, referring to the quantities of the ingredients. While the Pound Cakes we make today often have different proportions from the original recipe, and often contain baking powder or baking soda, they are still wonderfully rich, moist, and buttery with a lovely golden brown crust.
This cake is delicious plain or with just a dusting of powdered sugar. You can also serve it with fresh fruit along with whipped cream or ice cream. You might also like to try toasting a slice or, an even better idea, is to make grilled pound cake. Jane Rodmell in her book 'Best Summer Weekends' suggest beat an egg with two tablespoons each of milk and Grand Marnier and then dip each slice of cake into this mixture, as you would French Toast. Then place the slices of cake on the grill, browning each side. Serve for dessert along with fresh berries and whipped cream. Absolutely delicious.
While this cake can hold it’s own, it’s even better when served with homemade whipped cream and fresh fruit. It would also pair well with a spoonful or two of lemon curd (a great way to use up some leftover egg yolks!).
It is believed that the pound cake is of northern European origin and dates back to the early 1700s. A recipe for pound cake is in the first U.S. cookbook, American Cookery, which was published in 1796.
Over time the ingredients for pound cake changed. Eliza Leslie, who wrote the 1851 edition of Direction for Cookery, used 10 eggs, beat them as lightly as possible, mixed them with a pound of flour, then added the juice of two lemons or three large oranges. This changed the flavor and texture of the cake. In the 2008 issue of Saveur, James Villas wrote that cake flour would not work in place of all-purpose flour because it lacks the strength to support the heavy batter.
An early variation on this cake replaced some of the flour with cornmeal made from dried corn (maize), which was then called Indian meal. A recipe for Indian pound cake was first published in 1828 by Eliza Leslie and later included in The Indian Meal Book, which was published in London in 1846, when people in Ireland were looking for alternatives to expensive wheat flour.
The most important thing when baking your pound cake is to make sure that you do NOT over-bake it. Make sure your oven is not running hot (you can keep two oven thermometers in the oven at all times just to make sure the oven display is telling me the truth) and then checking your cake earlier rather than later. Because of its thick batter and the sheer volume of batter, it’s going to take quite a while in the oven, probably an hour and ten to an hour and fifteen minutes.
