Pound Cake
Play. That's what cooking is. Real play. Not games, not childish tomfoolery. But play. Which is a very adult thing.
Play is the essence of creativity. As I detail in REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, our seven-step plan to get off processed food, play is the state found in flow: when the task at hand is just slightly more than the skills on board. If the task is too hard, you end up with frustration. If it's too easy, boredom. But when you get that balance, just slightly off-kilter, weighted toward the task but with you skills in tow, you enter the state of flow where conscious thought falls off, where creativity kicks in, where time seems utterly meaningless.
Have you ever had this moment? Playing the piano? Painting? Doing yoga? Reading? Reading with the kids? It's a drug. A great drug. The best there is.
For Bruce, cooking is play. It's all about flow. He can get in the kitchen and lose the day. He has a blast. And is concentrating, too. It's work plus learning plus fun plus growth. In other words, honest play.
So it is with his pound cake recipe, found originally in THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK. He's morphed this thing over the years, cutting down the butter, adding extra leavening with leaveners, all to make the best pound cake around.
Here's the recipe:
First, position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan, making sure to get the butter down into the corners and seams. Add some flour, tip the pan around to coat it everywhere inside with flour, and tap out the excess.
Now beat 5 large, room-temperature egg whites and 1/2 teaspoon salt with an electric mixer at high speed until quite foamy. The salt will help break up the whites.
Add 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar and continue beating at high speed until soft peaks form. Remember that beaten egg whites are a foam, air suspended in protein. As such, the whites need to be at room temperature. That way, the protein chains are long, able to build structure as they're whipped. And remember, too, that a drop of water in the mixing bowl--or a drop of egg yolk--will keep them from rising as high as they can.
With the beaters still running at high speed, beat in 2/3 cup sugar in 1-tablespoon increments until the peaks are glossy and a bit stiff. All the sugar need not be dissolved, but there should be no graininess visible in the foam. Set that all aside.
Why the egg whites? They're the leavening. Bruce has tried it with a little baking soda, with a little baking powder--no go. The whites give it heft while keeping that dense crumb.
Clean the beaters and get out another mixing bowl.
Beat 16 tablespoons, cool, cubed unsalted butter (that is, 2 sticks)--you've come this far; don't turn back--and 1/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy, about 5 minutes.
Why cool? Because butter has to be below 68F to trap air. Otherwise, it becomes smooth and spreadable, great for bread, bad for cakes and cookies. The point of beating is like this is to build a structure with the fat trapping air globules. So you need a good mixer and patience.
Here's the mixture when it's right. Now beat in 5 large egg yolks one at a time, letting each one get fully incorporated before adding the next. When done, beat in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract.
Add 2 cups cake flour and beat it in at low speed. Here's the trick of cake making as Bruce has taught me: before you add the flour, you can't overbeat the thing; once you add the flour, you have to be careful not to. The wheat glutens can stretch out and get gummy--no one's idea of a great cake. So you need to beat the flour just until there are no white streaks in the batter.
Scrape down the beaters and remove them from the batter. Use a wooden spoon to stir in half the beaten egg whites--fairly well, really stirring. Once those are incorporated, add the remaining egg whites and fold them in very gently, just until they are mixed throughout the batter. A few white streaks remaining are the goal. Be gentle. You want to keep some of the air in place that you've put into that egg white foam.
Scoop, scrape, and spread this batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake it until the cake is puffed in the center and golden, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, between 50 minutes and 1 hour most likely. Cool the cake in its pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn it out and continue to cool it on the rack.
Slice at will. As you can see by this photo, I had my piece with a dollop of this year's red plum jam. But ice cream would work. Or have you ever had toasted pound cake for breakfast? Wow. Don't use a toaster. Just put it on a baking sheet under a preheated broiler. As I said, wow.
Mark Scarbrough | Posted on Monday, August 2, 2010 at 12:58PM
Reader Comments (10)
Is it just me, or did I miss the step where you add the beaten egg whites? I really want to make this but I don't want to screw it up by mixing them in the wrong order!
Wait. I think I missed something. What happens to the egg whites?
When are the egg whites added to the rest of the batter?
I love baking, too. And pound cake is my favorite thing to do. As for my kids, well, they eat anything with frosting so pound cake or not they would still eat it, lol! I can actually slip a carrot and zucchni cake for my kids' dessert as long as it's fully covered with frosting.
Ugh. You guys are my saviors. So sorry. I've been working like mad to finish off our next cookbook--just wait until you hear what it's about!--and so my brain has been out to lunch for other things. Mea culpa!
The recipe is now fixed in the post. Those beaten egg whites are added after the flour.
M.
I made the rice pudding from the Ultimate Cookbook. My house smells delicious and it tastes great. I had to taste some to know if it was okay to serve my husband. The pound cake will be next week's sweet. I can't wait!
I love The Ultimate Cookbook. The recipes are easy to follow, taste great, and the other info spread throughout the book have helped me tremendously in the kitchen. Thanks Mark and Bruce!
Well, thanks, Dawn. I needed that after screwing up this pound cake recipe in the original post. (Fixed now, but I'm still not over it!)
M.
I always wondered why it was so important to separate eggs in certain recipes. I appreciate your explanations surrounding the science of real food preparation. It's a nice reprieve from the abundance of fake food science that's fueling our supermarkets. Oh, and that pound cake looks so delicious. It's definitely on my "to make" list. Thanks for this post.
Is that 2c of sifted, or unsifted cake flour?
If at all possible I'd love to see measurements done by weight (and in my perfect world, metric)
It sounds like a fantastic recipe though - I can't wait to try it!
Khai: Sorry, no weights here. Just not enough time in the day. And there are ever so many conversion programs across the net.
And sifted, unsifted. For a sturdy recipe like this, it really doesn't matter.
M.