Pound cake

Pound cake is a cake which in the olden days was said to be made from a pound of each of 4 ingredients: Flour, eggs, butter and sugar. This as you would have guessed by now will make a a lot of cake, much more than a family can consume. Nowadays the pound cake recipe  has  changed.When I found this recipe , I decided to give it a try immediately. The reason being , firstly i love pound cakes and secondly because you can use pound cake in different ways... making it totally versatile. You can eat the cake as it is with tea. It also takes good when you slightly toast it and eat. I also use it as a base for my strawberry shortcake:). The important part of this recipe is to have have the eggs, milk and butter at room temperature.

I made this cake following the recipe word to word and it came out yummy. Hope you will also like this recipe:))  

Ingredients:

1. Unsalted butter (at room temperature) - 1/2 cup +1/3 cup about 185 grams (Cut into small cubes)
2. Sifted Cake flour - 150 grams (Sift and then measure about 1 and 1/2 cups. I concentrated more on the weight , than the cup measurement)
3. Milk (at room temperature) - 3 Tbsp
4. Granulated sugar - 150 grams ( 3/4 cup)
5. Pure Vanilla extract - 1 and 1/2 tsp
6. Salt - 1/4 tsp
7. Baking powder - 1 tsp
8. Large eggs (at room temperature) - 3

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F or 177 C and place the rack in the middle or center of the oven.
• Spray some  non stick spray (i use PAM  baking spray.It has both the grease as well as the flour) on the loaf pan (9x5x3 inch). Place a parchment paper at the bottom and apply the spray on top of it again.This will help the cake not to stick to the bottom and come out clean.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and the vanilla extract.

• In a Large bowl of your stand mixer add the flour, baking powder,sugar and salt and run the mixer with paddle attachment in a low speed just until everything blended well.

• Now add the butter and half of the egg mixture and mix at low speed just until the flour is moistened.

• Now increase the speed to medium and let it run for 1 minute. If you are using hand mixer, you might want to do it a bit longer. This will help to aerate the cake batter and to develop the cake structure.
• Scrape down the batter and add the remaining egg mixture in 2 additions beating for about 30 seconds after each addition.

• Scrape the batter in to the loaf pan which we kept ready earlier. 

• Bake this cake for about 55 - 60 until the tooth pick when inserted comes out clean and the outer crust is golden brown. Keep an eye on the cake. At about 30 minutes, if you see that the outer crust of the cake is browning to too fast, here is what you do. Take an aluminium foil large enough to cover the open part of the loaf pan. Apply butter to it and cover the loaf pan with foil (butter side inside ).
• When the cake is done, remove from the oven and let it cool for about 10 minutes. Transfer the cake to a lightly butter wire rack.
• This cake can be frozen for up to 2 months or remains fresh in the fridge for about a week or so.

ENJOY!!

NOTE: 

• As mentioned earlier, i considered all the ingredients by weight because I believe that in baking measurement is very important:)
• It is advised to use Cake flour for this cake but if unavailable, you can use ALL PURPOSE FLOUR. The texture will be slightly different but will still taste delicious:)