Pecan pie pound cake. I often see things online that I'd like to make and, more importantly, eat. My Pinterest account makes that obvious.
One of my favorite podcasts featured an interview of the author of Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent,
As a rule, I always preheat my oven.
Pound cake. Is there any dessert that equals it in its combination of ease and speed of preparation and satisfying, delicious taste? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I love the holidays. I appreciate them so much more than I used to for two reasons.
My Mamboni says that people just don't make real, bonafide pound cake often enough anymore. I think she has taken it upon herself to make up for that lack of pound cake because it's a treat she makes often (and quite well, if I do say so myself)
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Pound cake pleases me most when it's a)slathered in strawberries and whipped cream, or b)subtly flavored with coconut. Mammy's latest version was made with lemon extract and a light glaze. Look at its moist, buttery goodness:
Delicious. However, if push comes to shove, I must say that I still prefer apple pie.
Mamster's Lemon Pound Cake
Makes 2 9x5 loaves or 1 Bundt cake
Directions:
Preheat oven to 325F. Butter and flour two 9x5-inch loaf pans, a tube pan, or a Bundt pan. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, cream the butter, shortening, and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the flour mixture, alternating with the milk. Stir in the lemon extract.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan(s) and bake 1 hour for the loaves or 75 minutes for the cakes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let the cake(s) cool in the pan(s).
Now that we have a back yard (and a front yard!)(we have yards!!), we've unintentionally become amateur bird watchers.
Generally, my order of cake preference would go something like this (from least favorite to tops): cheesecake, bundt cakes, pound cake, cupcakes, sheet cake, layer cake. (Apparently, my love of frosting is quite the driving factor here, making cake simply a vehicle for the creamy, sugar-happy stuff. Driving. Vehicle. See what I did there?)
The list is not set in stone, of course. Coconut pound cake moves up in the order and inadequately-frosted layer cakes move back. Cinnamon-centered anything automatically gets a high ranking, and on it goes.
But wait! Those are all sweet! There are other cakes to be taken into consideration...
Pancakes, for one. Or any type of bean cake-pattie-burger. And we must never overlook the potater cake.
Now, to be fair, there are recipes for true potato cakes, fluffy and probably chocolate-laden. But I'm here to discuss the savory side. You have your latkes (also known as potato pancakes), which are made of grated potato, flour, egg, and perhaps some seasoning and shallow-fried. There are also potato scallops or fritters, which, as I understand it, are common in parts of Australia, New Zealand, and England and involve deep-frying slices of batter-coated taters. (Why these aren't popular in America as well, I do not know.) Another variation from our neighbors across the pond is the Scottish tattie scone, a flatbread-type creation making use of mashed potatoes and a rolling pin.
This is none of those. I suppose it can be considered a combination of latkes and tattie scones, as it consists of already-mashed potatoes that are shaped into patties and pan-fried. Tatkes. That's what they are. Wanna know what else they are? Delicious. Tempting enough to cause one to rouse in the middle of the night and grope blindly to the fridge for a bite. Powerful, I tell you.
Tatkes
2 cups leftover mashed potatoes (unless you want to make a batch solely for this purpose, which is completely acceptable and understandable)
1/4 cup flour, or possibly more or less, depending on the moisture content of your taters
salt and pepper, to taste
other seasonings, as desired (I think rosemary is awesome)
oil, butter, or some combination thereof
Heat a skillet to medium-high heat and add a proper dose of fat.
Add the flour, salt, pepper, and other seasonings into the mashed potatoes and incorporate well. Form patties a bit smaller than the size of hockey pucks and let them sit for a few minutes to set up. Gently place the cakes into the hot skillet and let them fry until brown. Carefully flip the patties and then extract them when the other side has browned. Eat 'em while they're hot (or ice-cold as a midnight snack--no one's judging you).
...would be like a Monday without coffee. A room without windows. Rice Krispies without marshmallows. Sleeping without a pillow. It's just not right!
...if you were full of nutty cinnamon sugar.
I said farewell to my 20s a few days ago. There were gifts, there was laughter, and by Georgina, there was cake.
Sadly, it was impossible for someone of my limited photography skills to capture the pure, pristine whiteness of this cake with a mere digital camera. I guess you need two eyeballs (or maybe even just one) and a first-person viewing for that to happen. 
Or maybe I just need to work on my picture-taking.
Regardless, you'll just have to take my word for the fact that this cake is beautiful. Tasty, too. After all, it's pound cake (which is clearly a grand concoction on its own, what with its dense texture, balanced sweetness, and fine crumb) slathered with a fluffy, smooth cream cheese frosting (unbeatable, and that's the end of that argument) and sprinkled with coconut (perhaps the most tasty of all meats)(just kidding)(or am I?).
It must be said that I usually prefer my coconut toasted, but in this instance, I wanted the as-clean-as-untouched-snow appearance to remain. Little speckles of brown really kinda takes away from that, don't you think? Kinda like yellow spots in otherwise white snow...
Coconut-Crusted Sour Cream Pound Cake
(from good ol' Paula Deen)
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3 cups sugar
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
Cream Cheese Frosting
2 cups coconut
Preheat oven to 325F.
Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the sour cream and mix until incorporated. In a smaller bowl, sift the baking soda and flour together. Add to the creamed mixture alternating with eggs, adding one at a time and beating in between. Mix in the vanilla and pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for around 1 hour 20 minutes.
After cake has cooled, slather top and sides with as much cream cheese frosting as you can. Sprinkle Shower with the coconut.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
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| Moist and minty. |
Brown butter banana cake with brown butter frosting. Brown butter is the best. It's an ingredient I've decided to try to work into pretty much anything I make in the future, and I'm fully convinced that those treats will be all the better because of it!
Strawberry Cheesecake Poke Cake. I have never experienced anything as simultaneously blissful and weird as feeling our baby move around inside me.
My friend recently made an amazing peach pound cake to round out the 5★ meal that she and her husband served us, and I haven't been able to get peaches out of my head since then!
Cinnamon, brown sugar, and caramel are very near and dear to me. They make up my baking trifecta.
I may or may not have had a birthday recently.
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