Lemon Pound Cake

I feel like I should go back in the past a few days to write about the lemon pound cake that I made. Pound cakes are pretty basic cakes. They are called pound cake because they are traditionally made using a pound of eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.

I made it because I got this new book on baking (Ratios by Michael Ruhlman). It mainly discusses how ratios effect the way food turns out, and how you can make and manipulate recipes just by knowing ratios. This concept is pretty easy to work with in the case of pound cake, because the ratio is so simple. In other cases though, such as breads and doughs, changing the ratio slightly can have completely different results. But for my first look at ratios, I decided to start easy.

The chapter on cakes described how the same ratio 1:1:1:1 of eggs:sugar:butter:flour could be used to make either a sponge cake or a pound cake. The real difference is in the order in which the ingredients are added. For instance, pound cake is made by mixing butter and sugar together then adding eggs and flour. Sponge cake on the other hand is made by mixing the eggs and sugar first (this creates more air) then adding the butter and flour.

I was very intrigued by how simply one thing could become another. I decided to make a pound cake using this ratio and adding lemon juice and a little vanilla. It turned out awesome! It was especially good right out of the oven. It must have smelled great, because my cat Hugo ripped through the tin foil I had covering it, and bit it. Luckily he didn't damage most of the cake!

Anyway I didn't take a picture of the cake, but I made it in an small bundt cake pan my Mom had given to me. Although this is not the traditional pan for a pound cake, it worked really well and looked a lot prettier.