One day, Amazon dropped a surprise on my doorstep.
My husband came across a cookbook he thought I’d like and ordered it for me.
He was correct, “A Real Southern Cook in Her Savannah Kitchen” by Dora Charles is loaded with really great and tempting recipes that I want to try.
As a thank you, I thought I’d try a cake recipe from the book.
Rich loves him a citrus-y dessert, so it was a no-brainer when I came across the recipe for the “Lost and Found Lemon Pound Cake.”
This is a wicked good pound cake, but, the recipe, kinda like the title of the book itself, is a bit… involved.
None of it is hard, but there is a lot of direction and several large mixing bowls called for, as well as cake flour and egg separation and… stuff.
So… want a really nice, old-fashioned pound cake?
Prepared to sift and separate and all that?
Let’s have at!
INGREDIENTS
Pan Coating:
•1 tbsp solid shortening
•1 tbsp veggie oil
•1 tbsp flour
Cake:
•1 lb butter (Kerry Gold is the best!)
•4 cups confectioners’ sugar
•1 cup sour cream
•2 tbsp vanilla
•1 tbsp lemon extract, or 1 tbsp lemon juice plus the finely grated zest of one lemon
•3 cups cake flour
•1/2 tsp baking soda
•8 large eggs, separated while cold, then brought to room temperature
•Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Heat the oven to 325º.
Combine the solid shortening, veggie oil, and flour together in a small bowl, then paint over your cake pan. Best. Coating. Ever! Cakes will just pop out of the most ornate cake pan.
A note on cake pans: the recipe specifies a 10″ Bundt pan or an angel food pan. There was way more batter than my Bundt pan could handle, so I would strongly suggest getting one of those big, old-fashioned angle food tube pans.
Cream the butter on medium speed with the paddle attachment until it is light and fluffy.
Add the confectioners’ sugar a half cup at a time, beating after each addition, then beat for a couple of minutes, until the mixture is smooth.
Add the sour cream, vanilla, and lemon extract or juice and zest, and mix well.
Sift the flour together with the baking soda – I just added the two to a large mixing bowl and whisked them together. Seems to work.
Add one cup of the flour to the butter and mix well. Add half of the the egg yolks, another cup of flour, then the remaining yolks and then the last of the flour. Try not to over mix, or the cake will be tough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and do the final mixing by hand.
Grab another large bowl – I used the (wiped out) bowl I used to “sift” the flour – and, using the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.
Fold the whipped whites into the batter, with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula, just barely mixing everything together.
Transfer the batter into your prepared cake pan, rotating and twisting to level the batter.
Rap the pan sharply on the counter top about 30 times, rotating slightly each time. This is supposed to eliminate any air pockets, and I somehow missed this step (I told you this was an involved recipe) – mebbe that’s why my cake overflowed the Bundt pan?
Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 300º, then bake the cake for another 15 minutes before you test it, The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Mine took all of one hour to bake.
Cool on a rack until you can easily handle the pan, then run a knife around the edges and the center tube and flip the cake onto the rack to cool completely.
Just look at how nicely that cake popped out of the pan!
Dust it with a bit more confectioner’s sugar and serve.
This is quite nice on it’s own, but mebbe a little better topped with fruit macerated in a bit of Cointreau.
I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a dab o’ Crème Anglais either, which you could make according to the linked recipe, or, since you’ve already been sifting and separating and rapping cake pans; why not go the easy way, as suggested by Ina Garten; simply bring a pint of good vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and allow it to melt. Voilà! Almost instant Crème Anglais!
Go ahead, enjoy your cake.