True Pound Cake Recipe

1
30 mins
150 mins

Ingredients

1 pound Butter ( 4 sticks)
1 pound Confectioners Sugar
1 pound Eggs (10 large eggs)
1 pound All-Purpose Flour, or Cake Flour (3 & 3/4 cups)
2 Tablespoons Vanilla Extract

Preparation

Step 1

To Make Your Own Cake Flour:

I started by weighing out one pound of All-Purpose Flour. You can buy Cake Flour straight off the shelf in your favorite grocery store, but I decided to make my own, and show you how to do the same. If you decide to use purchased cake flour, you can skip on down a few steps to where we sift the Powdered Sugar.

To make Cake Flour, you’ll need to remove two Tablespoons of flour for each cup measured. I removed 7 Tablespoons of flour and placed it back in the bag.

To make the Cake Flour, you’ll replace the removed flour, Tablespoon-per-Tablespoon, with Corn Starch. Thus, I measured out 7 Tablespoons of Corn Starch to replace the same amount of flour that I had just removed. Still with me?

To make the Cake Flour, add the corn starch to the flour. I then took a fork and mixed it up a bit.

To make the Cake Flour, place the combined flour and corn starch in a sifter that you’ve placed in a mixing bowl. We’ll need to sift the flour 3 different times, so you’ll also need another mixing bowl.

To make the Cake Flour, sift the flour into the mixing bowl. That’s one time completed.

To make the Cake Flour, place the sifter in another bowl. Spoon the sifted flour back into your sifter and sift it for the second time.

To make the Cake Flour, place the sifter back in the original bowl. Spoon the sifted flour back into the sifter and sift again for the THIRD time. Congratulations, you’ve just made your own Cake Flour. That’s all there is to it. Set the Cake Flour aside for the moment.

OK, this part got a bit messy. Spoon the Powdered Sugar into your sifter. Keep the sifter down in the bowl as much as possible as you sift the Powdered Sugar. I’m not sure why, but this produced a great deal of static, the more I turned the handle on the sifter. The sugar then decided it wanted to cling to my sifter, and to my body, flying in all directions out from under the sifter and attacking my kitchen.

You’ll need a good sized mixing bowl to continue. Add the pound of softened Butter to the bowl.

Using a mixer, beat the butter until it’s light and fluffy. At first, my little hand mixer didn’t want to do this for me, but after the butter warmed up a little, we moved forward.

Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed, throughout the process of mixing the batter.

Gradually add the sugar a little at a time, and continue to mix it all together.

Scrape down the sides again, and cream the butter and sugar together until it’s light and fluffy.

The next step doesn’t take as long as you might think. We’re adding the eggs, one at a time, until we’ve got them all incorporated into the sugar and butter. It’s always best to crack the eggs into a small bowl before adding them into your batter. That way, should any egg shell fall in, you can easily see and retrieve it.

Beat the egg just briefly after you add each one. You only need to mix it until the yolk has been mixed in. Do not over mix the eggs.

You’ll then repeat the process of adding one egg at a time, until they are all incorporated. Again, just beat lightly after adding each egg. The less you have to work the batter at this point, the better the end results.

Gradually add the Flour, about one cup at a time. With the mixer, beat this in the batter until it’s incorporated, but don’t over do it. Continue to add the flour until it’s all been added to the batter.

Add the Vanilla Extract. Use the mixer briefly to incorporate the flavoring. Then, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and fold the batter together a time or two more.

You don’t want any excess spray gathering in the bottom of the pan. I took a pastry brush and smoothed this out by brushing up the sides of the pan and up the sides of the tube in the center. You really need to be sure that the entire inside of the pan is well coated before adding the batter. Exercise a little patience here and get it right. You’ll be happily rewarded with a cake that releases easily from the pan.

Carefully add the batter to the pan. I held the bowl and turned the Bundt Pan as I poured the batter. Then, I used my spatula to smooth the batter out inside, and get it as level as possible all around the pan.

I placed the cake on the middle rack in my oven. Do not preheat the oven. Just place the cake in the cold oven and close the door. Turn the heat up to 275º and let the cake start to bake. It will need to bake between 1-and-1/2 hours, to two hours.

I had vowed to let this one bake a full two hours just to see what would happen. I do not have a glass door on my oven, so that became a bit of a task to complete. I made sure to keep sniffing around the oven to make sure it wasn’t burning. I must admit though, I tested the cake at an hour and 45 minutes to see if it was done. I saw just a few crumbs on the wooden skewer that I inserted into the cake. I think it would have been best to have pulled the cake out at that point, but again, I was mindset on baking for two hours.

Beautiful! After 20 minutes, place the wire rack on top of the cake. Gently hold the rack against the cake and flip it all over. Set the rack and pan down on your counter. If the cake doesn’t fall right out, gently tap around the bottom of the cake pan. You’ll hear a slight change in the tone of your tapping, once the cake falls out. I did have to tap mine a time or two, and held my breath as I lifted the cake pan away.