Lemon Crème Fraiche Pound Cake

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.