Tuesdays with Dorie: Perfection Pound Cake

First of all L’Shana Tova! It’s Rosh Hashanah today and while I’m not Jewish I do work at a synagogue. I won’t be able to comment on everyone else's TWD posts until this afternoon because I have to work until noon handing out appeal cards to our members. Now back to the baking...

I did intend to make the Crème Brulee that Mari of Mevrow Cupcake chose this week – really! I have the little ramekins and everything. But alas, this is the story of why I didn’t make the Crème Brulee: My coworker Gwen is one of the sweetest, nicest people on the planet but she claims to be a not-so-great baker. She’s been especially nice to me lately and I owed her a pound cake which is her favorite (I think). Then I looked at the previous TWD recipes and found that the Perfection Pound Cake had been made in January and we were allowed to do Rewind recipes this week so I decided to skip the Crème Brulee and do the pound cake instead.

In true Dorie fashion the recipe used two sticks of butter and four eggs, other than that it was really just flour, sugar, vanilla, salt and baking powder, very simple. I always think that pound cake batter smells better than it actually tastes, but that’s just me. The batter was fluffy and pale, I used two small foil pans (I'm not really sure on the exact size) to bake the cakes in. I made one for Gwen and one for me. The recipe says to cook them for something like 75 minutes I think, but it only took 60 minutes for me to get a clean knife with a few clinging crumbs. I did end up tenting them half-way through baking though so they would retain their pale golden color.

Both caked turned out nicely. I don't know what Gwen thought about hers yet but the one I kept for us was pretty tasty. I ate mine like Dorie suggests, thinly sliced and served with jam. I think this would be especially good with tea.

Next week is Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake and I'm hoping it's just as good as the picture in the book.