Hard to go wrong making stuff with flour, sugar, milk, butter, and eggs in it! If you want to make something that's really good ... and easy to make, try the simplest of all baking recipes ... one that gives equal weight to each of those five magic ingredients ... The OLD FASHIONED FIVE - Pound Cake.
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
4 sticks butter
8 large eggs
1 pint whole milk
Old Fashioned? ... Man, that's just plain OLD!
That's it ... mix it and bake it!
Well, cream the sugar and butter ... add and thoroughly mix the rest, one thing at a time, ... including the eggs, sans the shells, of course.
Yes, add the eggs, one at a time while beating well ... after half the eggs have has been well beaten in, add half the flour and mix. Then add the rest of the eggs and flour, and mix well.
Pour into greased and flowered loaf pans and bake in preheated oven at 350° ... back in the day, most folks didn't have fancy cooking thermometers ... but they did have broomstraw and toothpicks. Just stick a clean one in the middle of the cake ... and if it comes out clean when you remove it, it's done. If it comes out with cake batter on it, is a sure sign it ain't ready!
It pays to look at it now and again too ... if it's turning golden brown on the top, chances are it's close to ready ... if it ain't, chances are it ain't.
Maybe one hour and 20 minutes, give or take ...
Did you notice? On an approximate basis, each of the ingredients weighs the same ... one pound!
1 pint milk ... 8 Large eggs ... 4 Sticks of butter ... 2 Cups of sugar ... 4 Cups of flour = 1 pound.
How do you think it got its name ... dang!
I tried that recipe in Germany, November, 1964 ... turned out real well too, especially given that it was my first effort!
That was just after another of my first efforts ... making homemade bread. I made some very tasty sourdough bread ... hard work ... the bread really was good but one loaf weighed a ton!! Unbelievable ... but it sliced well ... my only attempt at making Sourdough Bread. Never figured out why it was so heavy ... probably left out some soda or something.
The pound cake's heavy too!
OLD-FASHIONED POUND CAKE - Adapted
Nice thing about this recipe are the proportions ... since 1 pint = 2 cups, you can easily make a nice snack or desert for two ... The OLD FASHIONED ONE AND ONE QUARTER - Pound Cake
Flour = 1 cup
Sugar = 1/2 cup
Butter = 1 stick
Eggs = 2 large
Milk = 1/2 cup
To that I would add a pinch of salt and baking powder
Enjoy!
Well, I just attempted the adapted "TWO and ONE HALF Pound Cake" version ... as I remembered it ... a snap, right?
ReplyDeleteYou'd thought I was Mary Poppins ... it went practically perfect in almost every way ... ready to bake, I poured equal amounts into two pans ... and it would have been perfect too!
Then I judged that it would all fit into one pan ... with enough "growing room" to spare ... and so I poured it all into one ... prefect!!
However, after about 50 minutes, I smelled something burning ... it had overflowed and a big blob on the floor of the oven was ablaze!!
I took the pan out of the oven and extinguished the fire ... checked the cake with a broom straw ... it said it was done and the top 2/3 was ... nothing stuck in the pan but but the bottom third was wet (not fully cooked)!
The cooked part tasted great!
I cleaned up the mess and just finished trying to complete the cooking process ... not good ... the top is now too dry ... but it wooda, cudda, shudda been really good, methinks!
New Warning Label ... Do not fill the pans more than two/thirds full!
My kitchen is s disaster zone. It's my own fault, I encouraged M. Bobby to use my hand-held mixer rather than to try and mix that heavy cake batter by hand. I surmise that I needed to warn him to be sure that the mixer blades were still before they were lifted out of the batter. There appears to be little blobs of batter everywhere in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteCarol ... you should video tape Mister Bob and place the results here with the accompanying recipes ...
ReplyDeleteMister Donkey, this is a family barbershop ... that's all I have to say about that!
ReplyDeleteI admit that I made some rookie mistakes yesterday ... but, Miss Carol said I had enough room in that pan!
The mixer is a problem ... not because of the mess which wasn't much of a mess at all ... but because it creates a different texture and taste than when you earn it ... the desired objective of the original, simple recipe.
These modern conveniences is nice but you'll get something more like a cheese cake than an old fashioned pound cake if you ain't careful.
The problem with rookie mistakes is that them what make them, frequently make more than one ... as do some of us from being lazy, even when we know better.
Well, I was headed too Kroger to buy some butter and some eggs ... when the danged fire alarm went off!!
it was a false alarm that cost me an hour ... and I decided against Kroger, having sufficient eggs and butter for the job at hand ... and late this afternoon, two loaves of "pound cake" were ready to be had!
Half of one has been eaten ... so it tain't all that bad, but three tips ...
One, if you must use a mixer, it's probably best to use the lowest available setting ...
Two, where it says "large eggs" ... it means "large eggs" as in 2.0 ounce eggs ... not "really big eggs" as in 2.5 ounce eggs, aka "Jumbo" eggs!
I knew better ... but, knowin' is but half the battle! In the full 8 egg version, that's two extra large eggs ... not a very good idea, unless of course, your cake is a substitute for breakfast and you want it to taste like eggs!
Third ... don't trust broomstraw with the deed to the ranch ... it may just come back clean before it's really, really, really ready!
Still, it wasn't too bad ... super good, but for those dumb rookie mistakes!