July 14, 2014

Light, Fluffy Pound Cake

When I saw Deb’s recipe on Smitten Kitchen for a lighter, fluffier pound cake, I knew I had to give it a whirl. A pound cake that won’t be so dense and rich that it tastes like delicious regret? SOLD. I like pound cake, but I think I’d like pound cake even more if it wasn’t so assertive in reminding me that it contained a approximately a pound each of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs.

Delusion — I like to live my life in it sometimes.

Luckily, a friend’s birthday was coming up, giving me the perfect excuse to whip up a cake. But why is it that you need a reason to make a cake anyhow? Like if you made some cookies just for the hell of it, people would just all agree on the greatness of homemade cookies. But if you made a cake for no reason, all of a sudden it’s like “You’ve got a problem, do you need to talk to someone?” It’s unjust.

This recipe makes one regular-sized loaf of cake, or two mason jar cakes and one adorable mini-loaf. I sent the tagged jar to Atlanta, where I hope my currently sugar-free friend broke her fast for her own birthday or at least was able to give it to a pro-sugar buddy.

Deb’s recipe calls for a tablespoon of Cognac, which I didn’t have, so instead I subbed in 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract and 1/2 tablespoon of Princess cake emulsion. You can also do a full tablespoon of any extract you’d like — I imagine vanilla or almond extract would be pretty amazing in here too.

I did mess up a bit in using boysenberry jam (which, whoops, contains fairly sizeable seeds) instead of my intended marionberry jam, so if you too would like to stir some jam into the batter (about 3 tablespoons worth is perfect) or do some beautiful jam stripes in a mason jar, ahem, use a seedless variety. But really, the jam is superfluous here. This cake delivers on its promise of being lighter than traditional pound cakes, without lacking in flavor and decadence, so my jam addition was just like putting gold leaf foil on a Fabergé egg.

Light, Fluffy Pound Cake
Barely adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Yield: Makes one loaf cake
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes (including 10 minutes for cooling)
Total Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

1/2 pound (8 oz) butter, room temperature (and some for greasing the pan)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Salt
4 large eggs, separated
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 tablespoon Princess cake emulsion (or any extract of choice)
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter your pan. If you want to do a mason jar cake, see below.*

Get out two big mixing bowls. In one, sift your flour. Then, sift your flour again into the other mixing bowl, this time adding in the baking powder and a pinch of salt. Do this sift swap two more times. Be gentle with the mixture — keeping it nice and aerated will help make the pound cake lighter!

Whip the egg whites until they hold soft peaks, then stream and beat in 1/2 cup of sugar. Do this at about two tablespoons at a time. Move this to a bowl.

Cream the butter until it’s light and fluffy. Stream in and beat the remaining 6 tablespoons of sugar until it’s even fluffier. Then toss in the egg yolks until everything looks like soft lemon sorbet. Beat in the extracts and lemon zest until combined.

Slowly fold the flour mixture into the butter-egg mixture. I do this with a rubber spatula. After that is just incorporated, fold in your beaten egg whites. Continue folding until the batter is smooth. Pour it into your pan and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool it in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove it to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

*For mason jar cakes: Butter the inside of the jars and fill with batter about halfway. Place the jars inside a cake pan for easier handling. While the cakes bake, simmer the part of the lid that comes in contact with the jar — not the ring part. Heat it for about 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the lid sit in the warm water until the cakes are ready. As soon as the cakes are done, pat the lids dry and put them on the still-hot jars (use gloves!), then screw the lid on as tightly as you can. Let them cool on a rack. You should hear a pop as the heat from the cake forms a vacuum seal with the jar.