Random moosages as I see fit.

I’ve been thinking about pound cake a lot.  I don’t really know why I started to think about pound cake.  But as I was considering pound cake, it made me think of some of my first experiences with pound cake, namely Entemann’s pound cake (which is apparently called an “all butter loaf cake”), which is still the pound cake I think of in taste and texture when I think of pound cake.  None of that Sara Lee stuff.

I am going to continue to say pound cake.

Anyway, I remember asking my mother why pound cake was called “pound cake.”  I was confused because I thought maybe the cake itself was supposed to weigh a pound and it didn’t.  She told me it was because there was supposed to be a pound each of all the ingredients that went into a cake.  Oh.  Makes sense.

But then I looked at the ingredient list for commercially prepared pound cake.

Aside: You know what?  I think Entemann’s pound cake used to be called pound cake and they changed it to all butter loaf cake later because it isn’t really pound cake anymore as they don’t follow the pound of everything recipe. /end

Commercially prepared pound cake has an awful lot of stuff in it.  Just like most commercially prepared foods.  It’s one of the joys of living in an industrialized nation and industrializing our food manufacture.  But as a child, I did not know that.  I just thought that it didn’t make any sense to have a pound each of everything in the ingredient list.  No way is there a pound of salt with the pound of sugar.  The cake isn’t salty.  Something is wrong.

Well yes.  Something is wrong.  Because commercially prepared pound cake, and most cakes we consider pound cakes today, are derivatives of the original recipe.  The original recipes (as I could find them) state that there should be a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour all mixed and then baked in a slow oven (300-325deg F) for about an hour.  But that results in a heavyish cake.  There’s no leavening.  Or other flavoring besides your butter and sugar.  So people started adding stuff.  A lot of old recipes I saw added brandy or whiskey.  I see that various citrus rinds are used a lot for flavoring too.  And of course lots of bakers added baking powder so that the cake wouldn’t be so dense.

But I want to know what a real pound cake tastes like.  The original pound cake.  And since you cannot buy these things, I made one myself.  Or rather, I made six.  Mini ones.  And I had halved the recipe because I didn’t want that much cake.  So it was more of a half-pound cake.

Anyway.

I creamed the butter and sugar.  Then I added the eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated.  Incidentally, a half-pound of eggs is about four extra large eggs.  And then I added the flour in two installments, mixing until just incorporated.  The resulting batter is quite thick.  I portioned the batter out into my mini loaf tins and threw them into the oven preheated to 325deg F for 50min.

The batter was REALLY thick.  You can see how difficult it was for the bubbles to escape.  I probably should have shaken the pan a bit before baking to release the air bubbles.

The tiniest pound cake!

In terms of taste and texture, it’s kind of like a really soft shortbread cookie, which makes sense since the ingredients are pretty much the ingredients for a shortbread cookie.  The cake doesn’t have much rise to it, which also makes sense since there’s no leavening.  I kind of like the mini loaf because it means the outside edges are nice and crisp (from all that butter) but the inside is nice and soft.

I think I prefer Entemann’s still.  Next time, I’ll probably add some baking powder, vanilla extract, maybe some brandy because that sounds kind of good, lemon rind?, and a dash of salt.

I had a huge craving for chocolate cake the other day and it was only made worse because a friend had recently acquired a whole chocolate motherlode cake (well a half size one, so only 3 layers) from Claim Jumpers and she was showing me pictures of it.

Now, as much as I like the motherlode, I can’t really eat a whole one.  Even a slice is way too big.  When I get a slice, I always get it to go and it’s dessert for six days running.  What do you do when you want chocolate cake and you don’t want to buy a whole cake?  Microwave mug cake.  Def.

Now, if you’ve ever tried making a microwave mug cake and was entirely put off by the experience, I can’t blame you.  I too have been utterly disappointed by microwaving cakes.  Because…it’s a microwave.  And microwaved foods often have an…interesting…texture.  But I’ve finally found a recipe that produces a really great cake texture, probably because it doesn’t involve eggs.  It’s a recipe from tablefortwo and she even has a vanilla variant if you’re weird and don’t like chocolate.

Notes:

• I’ve made the cake with both Hershey’s Special Dark (top) and regular cocoa powder (bottom).  I also tend to use very generous tablespoons.  I’m really fond of chocolate, guys.
• I substituted the milk for plain soy milk, because that’s what I had on hand.  Works just fine.  And the plain soy milk I have has a slight vanilla flavor to it, so it works well with the cake.
• She microwaved for 70s at 950W, which I find to be just right.  I have a 1300W microwave, so I microwaved for 80s at 70% power. Came out nice and fluffy.
• I think I might try stuffing a dollop of peanut butter in next time instead of Nutella.  It’s really good with Nutella, but I’m a big fan of the chocolate/pb combination.