Heirloom Recipe: Grandma's Old Fashioned Pound Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is a secret ingredient for cakes? ›

Mayonnaise: The Hidden Gem in Cake Recipes

Made up of eggs and oil, mayonnaise acts as an emulsifier, adding creaminess and moisture to your cake. This unexpected addition can take your cake recipes to a whole new level. To incorporate mayonnaise into your cake batter, simply add a couple of tablespoons to the mix.

Baking a cake in a too-hot oven for the recommended time will dry it out. And baking a cake in a not-hot-enough oven will dry the crust before the center is fully baked.

Sponge cake is basically a foam cake, comprises egg, sugar, and flour as its primary ingredients. On the other hand, pound cake is classified as butter cake. It uses the same three main ingredients as sponge cake, but with the crucial addition of butter.

Cakes and pastries are fluffy and light in nature due to the presence of baking soda in it. When baking soda is combined with both an acidic ingredient and a liquid, it becomes activated. Upon activation, Carbon dioxide is produced, which allows baked products to rise and become light and fluffy.

The milk adds fat, which results in a better flavor and density in your cake. If you want to make your cake extra rich, swap out the milk for buttermilk. Because buttermilk is extra thick, use a few more tablespoons than the recipe calls for.

Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Not 350°F. Generously grease a 10-12 cup Bundt pan with butter or nonstick spray. Using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the butter on high speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.

Using an air-tight container is the best and easiest way to keep your cake from getting exposed to air. However, if you don't have one of those, you can wrap your cake in cling film, or if it's iced, place a large inverted bowl over it to trap the air.

Unlike layer cakes, which use a thin batter that should never fill the pan more than halfway (more on that here), pound cake batter is thick, and should fill the pan within an inch of the top to encourage a prominent crown.

Be careful not to overbeat the butter-sugar mixture, especially on a hot day — you could rupture the air cells and cause the batter to be heavy.

When it's done baking, let the cake sit in the pan for 10 minutes: no more, no less. It's enough time for the cake to firm up some after baking so that it doesn't fall apart, but not so much time that the cake gets stuck to the pan. Ten minutes is the sweet spot.

How many pieces of cake are in a pound cake? ›

In that case, you can expect to get approximately 16 slices from a standard-sized pound cake that weighs around 1 pound. However, it's important to note that this is just an estimate, and the actual number of slices may vary depending on the size of the cake and how it is sliced.

Angel Food Cake and Pound Cake are both versatile, delicious cakes. But from the ingredients and fat content to the texture and flavor, these two cakes are not the same.

Oil Cake. Oil cakes follow the same principles as butter cakes, but use oil as the source of fat. Because oil is liquid at room temperature, oil cake recipes skip the step of creaming the fat and sugar; usually the oil is incorporated into the wet ingredients, which are whisked or folded into the dry ingredients.

Flour is perhaps the most important ingredient in a cake mix, as it creates the basic structure of the entire cake. A major component of flour is gluten, which is a protein that provides a way for the cake to bind to itself.

These are the key ingredients that make a cake rise. There are two types of leavening agents, chemical (baking soda and baking powder) and biological (yeast).