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Pound cake is among the most basic, well-known desserts of all time. It’s straightforward, too. The most elementary recipe is a pound every of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. It lends itself to infinite variations and strategies. So what can totally different cooks takes on this beloved dish educate us about pound cake? Loads, it seems. In this Cookbook Showdown, I examined 5 totally different pound cake recipes from beloved bakers and culinary figures. Which cake is a reduce above the remaining? Read on to search out out!
What is Pound Cake?
Pound cake is usually a dense, wealthy cake comprised of easy elements. At its most elementary, it consists of equal weights of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs, sometimes baked in a Bundt cake pan or loaf pan. Today, it steadily additionally consists of some sort of leavening agent (baking soda or powder) and varied flavorings like vanilla, fruits, or nuts. Some recipes substitute oil for some or the entire butter or add bitter cream for moistness and tang. The prospects are really infinite.
Dating again to no less than the 1700s in Europe, pound cake has been round a really very long time. It’s included within the very first American cookbook, American Cookery, revealed in 1795. That recipe instructed including “spices to your taste,” one other signal that pound cake has all the time been a spot for taste experimentation.
The 5 recipes I examined vary from Cheryl Day’s very basic pound cake recipe to Claire Saffitz’s candy and savory polenta pistachio pound cake. Each introduced one thing fascinating to the desk, and none have been complete fails. But just one can take the cake, so to talk. Let’s get to the good things.
Cookbook Showdown: Pound Cake Recipes
Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking by Cheryl Day
Cheryl Day is a bestselling cookbook writer, co-owner of Back within the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia, and a co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice. Her Treasury of Southern Baking has, by means of many Cookbook Showdowns and private baking adventures, turn out to be probably the most trusted baking cookbook on my shelf. As a collector of classic cookbooks, Day writes recipes based mostly on centuries of Southern baking traditions and strategies. When I made a decision to carry out this experiment, I knew she would have a dependable, basic pound cake recipe that will probably set the bar excessive for the remainder of my style testing.
Cheryl Day’s Cold-Oven Pound Cake
Day’s pound cake recipe comes with a bonus historical past lesson. Around the flip of the twentieth century, when gasoline stoves have been first delivered to the American market to exchange wood-fired ovens, pound cake was one among gasoline ovens’ greatest advertising and marketing instruments. Bakers have been instructed there was no have to stoke fires and even wait for his or her new ovens to preheat; the cake advantages from slowly rising in temperature with the oven, giving it extra time to rise and develop a deep golden crust.
As far as elements, Day’s recipe may be very fundamental. In addition to the standard eggs, butter, sugar, and flour, she requires baking powder, sea salt, milk, and vanilla extract. The batter goes right into a Bundt pan and bakes because the oven preheats. The directions are straightforward to comply with, and the cake got here collectively simply as promised.
I used to be fortunate to start out this Cookbook Showdown whereas making dinner for my spouse, mother-in-law, and aunt-in-law, Deborah. Deborah is somebody I steadily flip to for baking and culinary recommendation, and he or she provided up three metrics for judging a pound cake. The excellent pound cake ought to have a crisp golden crust, a constant bake throughout, and a melt-in-your-mouth buttery texture. Cheryl Day’s cake match all three of those necessities and obtained a rave assessment from everybody who tried it. It’s precisely the candy, buttery, wealthy cake I hoped for.
Cheryl Day’s Pound Cake Scores
- Taste: 5/5 — It’s completely wealthy, buttery, flavorful, and it makes an awesome base for toppings like recent berries and whipped cream.
- Texture: 5/5 — Perfect golden crust, gentle buttery crumb. It’s precisely what you need from pound cake.
- Creativity: 2/5 — This recipe doesn’t attempt to do something life-changing, however it definitely delivers.
- Difficulty: Easy — Basic strategies are used, and also you don’t even must preheat the oven.
- Overall: 4.75/5 — A scrumptious cake that does every little thing you anticipate from pound cake nicely.
Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration by Carla Hall with Genevieve Ko
Carla Hall is a star chef from Top Chef and The Chew recognized for her up to date tackle American soul meals. In Soul Food, Hall reveals that at its roots, soul meals makes use of and celebrates recent greens and produce, not simply heavy meats and fat as some would possibly assume. Hall’s dishes have made an awesome displaying within the fried hen, mac and cheese, and barbecue sauce Cookbook Showdowns. I treasure this cookbook and sometimes look to it for meal inspiration, however this was my first time making an attempt one among Hall’s dessert recipes.
Carla Hall’s Chocolate Pound Cake
Hall’s pound cake recipe is predicated on one handed all the way down to her by her Granny, and equally to Cheryl Day’s cake, it’s began in a chilly oven and bakes by means of the preheating course of. The elements are additionally fairly basic, with the addition of cocoa powder, buttermilk, gentle brown sugar, and mini chocolate chips.
The recipe is straightforward and straightforward to comply with. My most important concern was that, with a mixed 4 and a half cups of flour and cocoa powder and just one cup of buttermilk, the dry-to-liquid ratio was not what I might anticipate. The batter was tremendous thick. But let me let you know, the scent of my kitchen whereas this was baking was unbelievable. The ensuing cake is dense and undoubtedly on the dry facet, however it makes an awesome deal with with a cup of espresso or tea.
Carla Hall’s Pound Cake Scores
- Taste: 3.5/5 — I’m admittedly not an enormous chocolate cake particular person, however the cocoa powder within the batter and mini chocolate chips give it a pleasant taste.
- Texture: 2/5 — It’s tremendous dense and fairly dry. It’s greatest served with milk, whipped cream, or some sort of topping so as to add moisture.
- Creativity: 2.5/5 — Although not groundbreaking, I just like the chocolate model and admire the addition of the chocolate chips.
- Difficulty: Easy — The directions are straightforward to comply with, and you may bake it with out ready to preheat the oven.
- Overall: 2.5/5 — I’m not saying I’ll by no means strive one other Carla Hall dessert recipe, however this one merely didn’t measure as much as the competitors.
Baking by Feel: Recipes to Sort Out Your Emotions (Whatever They Are Today!) by Becca Rea-Tucker
Becca Rea-Tucker went viral on Instagram (@TheSweetFeminist) for her truffles and pies with feminist, pro-choice, and self-care phrases. She’s additionally unfold the love of baking by means of recipes on her well-liked weblog and, just lately, revealed a cookbook. Baking By Feel is the proper cookbook for stress bakers and individuals who use culinary experiments to type out their emotions (AKA me). Each recipe is paired with an emotion and an exercise or contemplation on that emotion. For instance, Rea-Tucker’s pound cake recipe is a dish to make whereas fearful, and her sidebar suggests writing down a listing of your worries to get them out of your head and hopefully make them seem extra manageable.
Becca Rea-Tucker’s Swirled Pound Cake
In her recipe description, Rea-Tucker shares that she’s a passionate fan of pound cake and steadily makes it at house. This recipe is a vanilla pound cake with a chocolate swirl and a crumb topping. She assures readers that even when you fear the swirl isn’t excellent, it’ll nonetheless end up scrumptious.
The elements and strategies for the vanilla pound cake are fairly commonplace, with a bit of bitter cream added for moisture and tang. A cup of the batter will get blended with cocoa powder to create the swirl, and the entire thing is completed with a flour, brown sugar, salt, and butter combination to create a crumb topping. The vanilla cake batter turned out fairly skinny, and it baked into a stunning texture. But when blended with cocoa powder, the swirl half grew to become a bit of denser and troublesome to unfold. The crumb combination was additionally denser and heavier than the first batter, so it sank into the batter somewhat than staying on high. My outcomes weren’t picture-perfect, however they did style fantastic. (You can see the swirl within the slice-by-slice picture on the backside of this text.)
Becca Rea-Tucker’s Pound Cake Scores
- Taste: 4.5/5 — The vanilla and chocolate flavors labored nicely collectively, and though the crumb topping didn’t keep the place it was presupposed to, it did add a pleasant brown sugar style.
- Texture: 4/5 — The vanilla pound cake had a superbly moist texture with a golden brown crust. Because the batter was skinny, although, the chocolate swirl and crumb topping sunk into the vanilla batter.
- Creativity: 3.5/5 — It meets basic pound cake expectations whereas additionally offering two fascinating twists.
- Difficulty: Moderate — The swirl and crumb topping includes further steps, and they’d have been simpler to attain if the vanilla batter wasn’t as skinny.
- Overall: 4/5 — With a barely thicker vanilla batter to help the swirl and topping, this recipe would have knocked it out of the park.
Bigger Bolder Baking Every Day: Easy Recipes to Bake Through a Busy Week by Gemma Stafford
Gemma Stafford is an Irish pastry chef recognized for her on-line baking present Bigger Bolder Baking. In this cookbook, she shares her perception that baking shouldn’t simply be reserved for particular events; there’s all the time a very good purpose to whip up a bit of one thing particular. With accessible recipes for each time of day and bakers of each ability degree, it’s a very helpful assortment of recipes to name on any time you’ve obtained the itch to strive one thing new.
Gemma Stafford’s Citrus Olive Oil Pound Cake
Stafford’s pound cake appears about as basic as they arrive, however its elements would possibly shock you. To begin, it’s citrusy, with recent orange juice and lemon zest bringing a pleasant tartness. More surprisingly, it’s butter-free. Instead, the cake requires a cup and a half of extra-virgin olive oil. I’ve baked with oil loads (see how olive oil chocolate chip cookies fared in that Cookbook Showdown), however butter is such an indicator of pound cake that I wasn’t sure how this might end up.
The reply? Amazing. The batter was fairly skinny, however it baked up extremely nicely with a superbly crisp, golden crust and a light-weight, moist crumb. I used to be blown away by the feel of this cake on day one, however I used to be much more shocked by how nicely it held up over the course of per week. It was nonetheless gentle, moist, and scrumptious days after baking, making it an awesome selection for a potluck, mailing to family members, or some other event the place a dessert can’t be served recent out of the oven. There is a noticeable olive oil taste to it, which could possibly be a turnoff for some individuals, however I assumed it balanced the sunshine citrus notes nicely.
Gemma Stafford’s Pound Cake Scores
- Taste: 4/5 — It’s advanced and scrumptious. The olive oil comes on a bit of robust, and the citrus could possibly be bumped up, however it’s near excellent.
- Texture: 5/5 — It’s obtained a completely excellent crumb, gentle and moist with a superbly crisp crust, and stayed that approach for days after baking.
- Creativity: 3/5 — The olive oil is a surprisingly efficient substitute for butter, and the citrus balances it properly.
- Difficulty: Easy — The hardest a part of a fundamental pound cake is whipping sufficient air into the butter, and the olive oil doesn’t even require that. It’s a really approachable recipe.
- Overall: 4.5/5 — Complex taste, wonderful texture, and stands up very well over time.
What’s for Dessert: Simple Recipes for Dessert People by Claire Saffitz
Claire Safftiz is a beloved meals author and YouTube video star who helps house bakers dream larger. She’s recognized for writing well-liked recipes at New York Times Cooking and Bon Appétit that make a few of the most complex pastry recipes accessible for folk who don’t have the time or price range to go to culinary faculty. In her latest cookbook, What’s for Dessert, Saffitz shares recipes for spectacular dishes with advanced flavors, damaged down into steps new however formidable house bakers can comply with. I’ve had nice experiences cooking from each this and Saffitz’s first cookbook, Dessert Person, and sometimes flip to them for reliable recipes that wow my family and friends.
Claire Saffitz’s Polenta Pistachio Pound Cake
I used to be fortunate to get to attend a launch occasion for this cookbook and listen to Claire Saffitz discuss her strategy to writing it. She wrote the recipes with out counting on costly instruments like stand mixers and utilizing elements she might discover at her native grocery store. However, I admit I needed to store on-line to search out each the coarse-ground polenta and the uncooked pistachios referred to as for on this pound cake recipe. Parcooked polenta is supposed to lend a gentle, creamy texture to the cake, with crushed pistachios bringing added taste and texture.
Perhaps the standard of the elements I used to be capable of finding on-line was missing, however this recipe didn’t fairly ship on its guarantees for me. The polenta cooked up in a 3rd of the time described within the recipe and have become too thick to correctly combine into the batter, making a lumpy texture within the completed cake. The uncooked pistachios have been troublesome to pound into items, and for my part, they’d have been higher in taste and texture in the event that they have been roasted as an alternative of uncooked. (Roasted pistachios additionally would have been approach simpler to search out.) So the feel of the cake general was missing. The taste, nonetheless, was a pleasant mix of savory and candy, and the lemon zest within the pistachio and sugar combine sprinkled across the edges and high of the cake brightened every little thing up.
Claire Saffitz’s Pound Cake Scores
- Taste: 4/5 — I just like the salty/candy steadiness introduced by the polenta and pistachios, and the lemon zest was a pleasant contact.
- Texture: 2/5 — The polenta didn’t mix nicely into the batter, and the pistachios would have had a greater crunch in the event that they have been roasted. The entire factor was very crumbly and troublesome to serve.
- Creativity: 4.5/5 — I liked the idea of this cake, even when I didn’t love the outcomes.
- Difficulty: Moderate — Parcooking the polenta, hand-crushing the pistachios, and making a pistachio/sugar/lemon zest sprinkle required further time and ability.
- Overall: 3/5 — The taste was good, however the texture left quite a bit to be desired. I feel a little bit of cornmeal might have introduced a greater taste and texture than the polenta.
Cookbook Showdown: Pound Cake Final Results
My most important takeaway from this Cookbook Showdown is that 5 pound truffles are a variety of pound truffles. I unfold them out over 5 weeks. I blended up the toppings with varied recent fruits and whipped lotions. It’s nonetheless…a variety of pound cake.
In excellent news, each one among them was satisfying. Even the driest or crumbliest cake had its deserves. It was a enjoyable journey that confirmed me simply how a lot vary pound cake brings to the desk. I thought-about testing a recipe from Aleksandra Crapanzano’s Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, which has, I child you not, FIFTY-THREE taste variations on the pound cake. I used to be actually so overwhelmed by selections that I couldn’t decide one. But when you’re a real pound cake lover, Gâteau might be a cookbook it’s best to personal.
At the top of the day, just one pound cake can take house the Cookbook Showdown crown. Let’s go to the slice-by-slice:
And the Winner Is…Cheryl Day’s Cold-Oven Pound Cake
There’s a purpose Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking has turn out to be one among my most trusted sources for desserts. Cheryl Day understands basic dishes, and he or she is aware of the right way to clarify dependable strategies in a transparent, concise approach. Her cold-oven pound cake has completely excellent texture and taste, certain to ship for any picnic, potluck, or banquet.
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