When I was younger, my mom would sometimes buy Sara Lee pound cake for us. You know, the freezer kind. And I loved it. The rich, buttery goodness of the pound cake melting in my mouth. Especially when my mom made a strawberry sauce to go with it.
Back then, I didn’t really think about why it was called “pound cake.” I just assumed it was because it weighed exactly a pound, or something. It turns out that it’s because the traditional recipe contains a pound each of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Talk about simple. I just wonder how that came about.
Nero was fiddling when he had a hankering for something sweet. Since he had just beheaded his pastry chef for not performing the sexual favors he had asked for, he had nobody to bark orders to make something sweet at. He went into the kitchen to find some ingredients for a sweet treat. He had relied on his manservants to do all of his cooking for him, so he was utterly clueless when it came to baking. He walked into the pantry. The memories of the secret, homosexual trysts he had in here came rushing back: togas being torn off of hot, sweaty bodies; olive garlands being tossed around carelessly. But this was not the time to reminisce about the good times of yore. His other burning desire, the one for sugar, needed to be fulfilled.
He could remember his pastry chef telling him about a cake he particularly enjoyed. Nero was having trouble remembering what exactly his pastry chef told him about the cake, since he was soon eating it off of his stomach, but he vaguely remembered that, in addition to the obvious sugar, he mentioned there was also flour in there. And then he remembered the attractive young pastry chef complaining that it took forever for the cows to produce the butter he needed, and the chickens to lay the eggs he needed. Four was the magic number of ingredients. This number he remembered, because he said there was one ingredient for each time Nero had taken him to his bedchambers. So he gathered up some flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.
But how much of each ingredient should he use? His boy toy said nothing about the proportions. At least, not anything he was listening to while he was eating the cake off of his perfectly-sculpted abs. He saw a small balance in the corner of the kitchen. There was a single weight on it, labelled “1 lb.” Left with no other choice, Nero measured out exactly one pound of each of the four ingredients. He mixed these together in a bowl, found a rectangular vessel nearby, and poured the batter in. The fireplace seemed to be at just the right temperature, so he put the pan into the fire. An hour or so later, the ingredients had magically transformed themselves into a rich, buttery, moist cake. And thus, the pound cake was born.
Thankfully, nowadays pound cakes can be made without putting so much of each ingredient in, and we also have innovations like sour cream and baking soda, like in this recipe. This is my go-to recipe for pound cake, just with vanilla extract and a little adjustment in the baking temperature and time.
Sour Cream Pound Cake
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sour cream
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 pinch baking soda
Cream the butter and sugar together, and then add the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla extract. Add the flour and baking soda and mix until just combined.
And then that goes into a greased and floured loaf pan.
After 65 minutes or so at 350F, it’s done.
The pound cake is a nice yellow color on the inside.
I like eating pound cake with strawberry sauce, so I made some.
Strawberry Sauce
2 pounds strawberries, hulled
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Just throw all the ingredients into a saucepan.
After cooking this for about 10 minutes, it thickens up and turns into this nice strawberry sauce.
I just had to try a slice of pound cake with strawberry sauce before I took it to a potluck.
It seemed to be a hit. Except people were watching their weight, and there were quite a few other desserts, so I was left with a bunch of leftover pound cake. But that meant more for me!