Vanilla Pound Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Vanilla Pound Cake. I was thrilled then this recipe was selected as pound cakes were one of the first cakes that I ever made, and I’ve had good luck with them from the very beginning. I almost didn’t make this cake as it’s been so warm and my house is so hot that I haven’t really felt like baking. When it is 81 degrees in the house at 9 am, I don’t really want to turn on the oven! I got home about noon on Monday and looked at the recipe. I really wanted to make this and I had all the ingredients, so I decided I would bake it. The house didn’t seem quite so hot at the time, which helped.

This cake is very classic and you can find the recipe with a quick Google search. It doesn’t use any unusual ingredients; just staples like butter, flour, sugar, and vanilla. I had some vanilla-infused sugar that I had planned to use, but I forgot to grab that rather than the regular sugar. I did use the tube pan as the recipe recommended; I don’t use it very often so it was nice to use something different. Mine baked up very nicely and came out of the pan beautifully.

I really like this cake. The crumb texture is very delicate, so the cake is nice and light. Even though the cake doesn’t have a lot of fancy ingredients, it’s still wonderful. A piece of the cake by itself was delicious, but I also will use the cake as the base for strawberry shortcake. This cake lends itself to variations, so make sure you check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see what the other TWD bakers did with this recipe.

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 251-252