Pound cake is one of the easiest
cakes to make, but to make a truly good pound cake requires just the right
recipe. When I came across a recipe for a lemon pound cake in Matt Lewis and
Renato Poliafito’s cookbook Baked: New
Frontiers in Baking (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2008), I was intrigued by
the fact that had melted butter
in it – and lots of it, as well as sour cream
to make it moist. Most pound cake recipes rely on the process of creaming the butter
and sugar together for several minutes to create the air bubbles that give the
cake its structure (along with a little modern help from leaveners). This
recipe relies on eggs and leaveners alone. So I tried Matt and
Renato’s recipe
and I thought it was excellent – very moist and very lemony (important for the
lemon lovers among us). Then I decided to tinker around with the recipe, changing
the ingredient proportions slightly, changing the mixing process, cutting the
sugar a bit, and substituting crème fraiche for the sour cream for extra
richness. The resulting cake is equally good (not necessarily better): a simple Bundt cake with lots of
tangy lemon flour and a moist crumb the color of sunshine. Another pound cake
recipe for the ever-growing repertoire.
After a five month vacation from
blogging, I was inspired to post today by a new book by my super-talented colleague,
pastry chef Dana Cree. I am convinced that Dana’s new book, Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream: The Art and
Science of the Scoop (Clarkson Potter, 2017), is destined to be a classic
on the subject of frozen desserts.
It covers lots of science (but not so much
that you begin to nod off), information that is key in creating frozen desserts
with the ideal flavor and texture. For example, Dana tells us how to make proteins
(eggs, milk) work for your ice cream, how the amount of sugar in your base
affects your ice cream’s texture, and how stabilizers
(bad reputation aside) work
to assure textural perfection. And then there are the recipes – ice cream
(custard as well as eggless Philadelphia style), sherbet, frozen yogurt and a
panoply of add-ins, including Cookie Butter Bits, Pretzel Toffee Chunks, Gooey
Butter Cake (!), and Creamy Caramel Ribbon. Makes me want to drop what I’m
doing, race to the kitchen, and make every blessed recipe in this incredible
new book. Thank you, Dana (I think!). Here’s her recipe for a Philadelphia
Style Vanilla Ice Cream with Buttercrunch Toffee Chunks added. I ate half of
the batch in two sittings – research, you know.
