Pound Cake

Pound cake gets its name from the fact that it’s made with equal parts sugar, flour, butter, and eggs, traditionally a pound each. Four ingredients in equal amounts. That’s it. This recipe stays within that promise when it comes to the basic ingredients, but then, naturally, I meander a bit off that path. My biggest departure is that I start with golden butter (butter that is cooked just shy of brown butter, which enhances the butter’s flavor). I also add baking powder to lighten the cake up, vanilla because I love the flavor, and milk powder to give the cake a dense, moist, creamy texture. This recipe also calls for you to whip the egg whites before mixing them with the batter. This technique is used in the French version of pound cake, called quatre quarts.

Because this cake is so simple, I thought it could use some dressing up, so I traded in the traditional loaf pan for a decorative loaf pan with a fluted, starburst pattern on top. The fluted surface of the pan I used gave the cake a beautiful, thick, brown crust. The contrast between that toothsome crust and the moist, tender crumb is what distinguishes pound cake from, say, a butter cake or a yellow cake.

This cake is best the day after it’s made; the cake softens, in a good way.

This recipe was excerpted from 'The Cookie That Changed My Life' by Nancy Silverton and Carolynn Carreño. Buy the full book on Amazon.