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

FAQs

What makes a pound cake turn out dry? ›

Extra sugar or leavening causes a cake to fall; extra flour makes it dry.

Mayonnaise: The Hidden Gem in Cake Recipes

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. The result? A tender and moist cake that will have everyone asking for seconds.

Add Sour Cream

To help prevent a dry, dense cake, let's add a creamy and light wet ingredient. Milk is usually required in a cake recipe to thin out the batter and lighten up the crumb, but sour cream is often overlooked. In addition to milk, add a Tablespoon or 2 of sour cream.

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.

A steady 325-350 degrees is ideal when it comes to baking pound cake. Position the pan in the middle of the oven, and rotate it once, halfway through the baking time, as it bakes to account for any hot spots.

The most common cake soak is simple syrup, equal parts sugar and water cooked until the sugar is dissolved. This added bit of liquid and sweetness help make the cake more moist, and stay moist longer. Professional bakers also use a milk soak, which is milk or cream dabbed onto the cake.

USE VEGETABLE OIL. While butter undoubtedly imparts excellent flavor, vegetable oil can really elevate a cake when it comes to moisture. Replacing butter with vegetable oil in your cake recipes typically yields moist results.

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.

Use cake flour in recipes where you want an extra-light, extra-fluffy texture, like Angel Food Cake, Cream Cheese Pound Cake, or Buttermilk-Chocolate Cake. You can also use cake flour to bring a more tender crumb to other sweets, like Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

Pound cake typically gets all its lift from the eggs, so if you want a lighter cake, try beating the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar, then whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks and folding them into the batter after stirring in the flour and flavorings.

Should I cover my pound cake? ›

I would suggest wrapping 2-3 times in plastic wrap and foil and stick it in a plastic grocery bag and tie it up. I don't ice pound cakes with anything other than a glaze, made with powdered sugar and a couple tablespoons of milk or lemon juice.

How many eggs are in a pound? Eggs vary in weight since not all eggs are the same. Large eggs tend to weigh just short of 2 ounces each. It takes between 8 and 9 large eggs to equal one pound.

No, angel food cake and pound cake are not the same thing. Angel food cake is made with egg whites, flour, and sugar. Pound cake is made with butter, eggs, flour, and sugar. Cloud-like angel food cake has no fat and no cholesterol.

Angel food cake is a low fat cake recipe made mostly from egg whites, cake flour, and sugar. It's pristine white on the inside with a chewy light brown crumb around the exterior. What it lacks in butter makes up for in texture. This tall, tender, and timeless cake has a cloud-like crumb and ultra light flavor.

If you use a cup rather than a scale there's a good chance you're using too much flour: up to 20% too much, if you use the measuring cup as a scoop then tamp the flour down. Any baked good — especially cake —with too much flour will be dry, hard, crumbly … take your unhappy pick.

A cake that's wet in the middle, in most cases, has not baked long enough. Put it back in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Be sure to check every 5 minutes with the toothpick test for any changes. If sliced, cover with aluminum foil to prevent the top from browning even more.

Try switching out any water in your recipe for full-fat milk or buttermilk for a moist, decadent texture. Another ingredient that can enhance the moisture of your cake is mayonnaise. Adding a dollop of mayonnaise to your batter can help make your freshly baked cake softer with an added boost of moisture.

If your pound cake is turning out tough or rubbery and the texture isn't what you expected, overmixing is often the issue. Recipes call for adding the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients in stages, beginning and ending with the dry ingredient. Why? It's a good way to prevent over-mixing your batter.