Thursday, March 4, 2010

March 4th: National Pound Cake Day

The term pound cake comes from the traditional recipe which required one pound each of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Well, not "traditional," I guess, but original. Back in the day when the oven was heated by a wood fire and you used the "seconds to too hot" method of sticking your hand in there to guess the temp, and your measuring cup was the same thing you drank coffee out of. Now we have these newfangled measuring devices, can be a bit more precise, and the recipe folks keep tweaking with things to get them right.

I guess every day is Something Day, if you look hard enough. But pound cake is worth mentioning because cake seems to be one of our more popular desserts and at the same time, one that no one really likes all that much. Everyone gets a birthday cake, not a birthday pie, but does anyone really prefer dried out, flavorless, airy baked dough that needs flavored icings and colorful decorations to get our attention? Does anyone prefer that to one of Grandma's fruit pies? But a pound cake, like it's cousin the Bundt cake, can stand on its own. Maybe on the bronze or silver step of the podium, but still standing nonetheless.

So for National Poundcake Day, how about Elvis's favorite? Simple recipe, just flour, eggs, butter, vanilla, and heavy cream. But in the spirit of Elvis, feel free to spread peanut butter on it and then deep fry it.

1 comment:

Sasa said...

I dunno anything about poundcake but I clicked through because you said "conniption" on Clotilde's blog and that's something I can really get behind. I'm going to use it at least 3 times in the next week.