Pound Cake

I make a mean pound cake. 

A kick-ass-take-no-prisoners-best-pound-cake-you've-ever-eaten-

omigod-gimme-another-piece-right-this-goddamn-second pound cake. 

If only they made scratch 'n sniff screens.

It is delicious. 

You want a giant slice.

It is the perfect texture. 

Admit it, you're drooling.

It is buttery and vanilla-y. 

You're licking the screen right now aren't you?

It is everything a pound cake should be, down to the recipe being in the name: one pound of each ingredient (except salt and vanilla, obviously because, well, that would be fucking disgusting). 

Cake's just, like, butter n sugar n eggs n flour.

It contains no leavening, no baking powder, no baking soda, no yeast.
There is no milk, no cream, no sour cream, no cream cheese.
It is a traditional pound cake in every sense.

The key to a perfect pound cake is two-fold:
1- you must use a scale to weigh out all of your ingredients*
2- you must use the proper technique to bring those ingredients together.

I use a stand mixer (mine happens to be a Kitchen Aid Pro that my darling husband bought me lo on many years ago for our first Christmas). If you only have a hand mixer, I hope it's a good one, because you'll burn out the cheapies if you do any serious baking. You could go truly old-school and make this by hand, but, I, for one, although I am crazy when it comes to baking, am not going to mix anything by hand unless it's something that comes together stupid easy, like chocolate chip cookies.

*After baking about a dozen or so and weighing the eggs each time, I've found that nine large eggs basically always come out to right at a pound, so now I "cheat" and just count out nine large eggs instead of weighing those.

First thing for just about every baking recipe is to preheat the oven to 350F (175-180C).

Prepare a large bundt or tube pan or three 9" loaf pans by spraying generously with a flour-cooking spray product for baking (I use PAM with flour for baking). If you want to use one of the smaller bundt pans that Nordicware makes (and I have several that I do love, in fact I used two in the bake for the pics here), you can either cut down the recipe to 2/3 or bake the extra batter in a loaf or in cupcake tins.

The trick to making sure you've got enough spray on there is to spray it until you think you've got enough and then give it another good coat. This is especially important with the more decorative pans, make sure you get it in all of those nooks and crannies so the design isn't ruined by the cake sticking.

Place one pound of room temperature unsalted butter into the mixing bowl and beat until creamy. Then slowly add the sugar while the mixer is running on lowish speed. Increase the speed and beat the ever-loving crap out of it.

On my stand mixer, I set it on a 6 and just let it go for about five minutes, maybe a little longer if the kitchen is on the cool side.

This is where most people trying to bake a cake from scratch go wrong. They just don't beat the snot out of the butter and sugar and then their cake is fail. I blame directions like "cream butter and sugar." See, I know that that means to beat them until they resemble soft whipped cream because I've been doing this for a while now. Most people see that and just mix them until they are combined and move on. What they don't realize is that this step is crucial to making a cake from scratch. Properly creaming the butter and sugar coats each granule of sugar in butterfat (mmm...delicious, delicious butterfat) and when the cake bakes this turns into magic. Or something. I honestly don't know the exact science behind it. All I know is that it works. This is what you want your butter and sugar to look like:

See how it's cream-like? Basically, it kinda looks like slightly curdled mayo. If your butter and sugar don't look like this you haven't beat them enough. I stop the mixer about half way through this process and give the bowl a good scrape down with a rubber spatula to make sure there's no butter stuck to the sides or bottom that isn't getting in on the action.

Add nine room temperature eggs, each egg one at a time. Beat the mixture until the egg is completely incorporated before adding the next egg. Yes, really do take the time to add each egg in this manner. You are building an emulsion, which is a fancy way of saying you are mixing together fatty stuff and liquidy stuff and those things don't like to be mixed, but if you do it just right they hold together in this special, creamy awesome way.

Now you can toss in a half teaspoon of salt (to be honest, I guestimate this and most of the time I just use a generous pinch of Kosher salt, but I've done enough cooking and baking to know what a half teaspoon of table salt or the equivalent weight of Kosher looks and feels like without getting out the measuring spoons) and a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste or extract and carefully stir in one pound of flour.

Mix until you don't see any streaks of flour. You don't want to over beat it at this point because flour has this stuff called gluten in it and it starts to develop when flour gets wet.

Gluten is a good thing. It's what gives baked goods structure. But we're baking a cake here, not a loaf of bread, so we don't want too much gluten to develop.

Still, we need to have everything truly combined. I add the flour a little at a time on setting 1 because I don't want a flour bomb going off in my face. Once all the flour is in I go ahead and increase it to 6 for oh, maybe 15-20 seconds, then turn it off, scrape the sides down and scrape along the bottom, then give it another 15-20 seconds on 6.  That seems to do the trick. Before putting the batter in the pan I give it another good scrape all around the bowl, especially on the bottom.

The finished batter is super thick, almost, but not quite, as thick as a dough. Don't let that freak you out. Don't go thinking you need to add anything to thin it out or that the finished cake will be dry. Trust me, it doesn't need another thing! If you go adding anything else, what you'll have is a butter cake NOT a pound cake. It may end up being a very nice butter cake, but a butter cake it will be. We're not making butter cake here. We're making pound cake. So leave it alone!

Glop it all in the prepared pan and smooth out the top (it doesn't have to be perfect). Give your pan a good thwack on the counter to make sure the batter is evenly distributed. Put on the middle rack of the oven and bake for one hour (20-30 minutes for cupcakes, 30-45 minutes for loaves and smaller bundts). Remove from oven and cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and place on a cooling rack and cool to room temperature before slicing. This will be very difficult to do because it will smell gorram delicious, but, seriously, wait until it's cooled to slice and eat it. It's worth the wait.

Yes, we did eat all of the little rosettes immediately. What?

Vanilla Pound Cake

Ingredients:
1 pound unsalted butter, room temp
1 pound granulated (white) sugar
1 pound unbleached all-purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur brand)
9 large eggs, room temp
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon high-quality vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste (I use Nielsen Massey)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F
Prepare pan(s) by spraying generously with a flour-cooking spray product for baking.
Place butter in mixing bowl and beat until creamy.
Slowly add sugar.
Increase speed and beat the ever-loving crap out of it.
Add each egg one at a time.
Add the salt and vanilla bean paste or extract and carefully stir in the flour.
Mix until thoroughly combined.
Transfer batter to the prepared pan(s).
Bake for one hour for a large bundt or tube pan. For 3 loaf pans or a small bundt, 30-45 min.
Remove from oven and cool in pan for 10 minutes.
Remove from pan and place on a cooling rack and cool to room temperature before slicing.