I am late posting this month’s sweet punch. For the month of July, sweet punch went back to the basics to bake a simple pound cake. The recipe is from The Cake Bible. According to Rosie, this cake is tight and comes out like the Sara Lee pound cake. I totally agree with her. The cake out perfect and the procedure is very simple and easy as well.

Total Time: 65 – 70 minutes
Preparation: 10 – 15 minutes
Bake Time: 55 – 65 minutes
Yields: 1 Loaf

Ingredients:

• 3 large Eggs at room temperature
• 13 Tbsp. / 184 gms. Unsalted Butter softened (I brought it to room temperature)
• 1 ½ cups sifted Cake Flour
• ¾ tsp. Baking Powder
• ¼ tsp. Salt
• ¾ cup Sugar
• 3 tbsp. Milk
• 1 ½ tsp. Vanilla

Preparation:

• Bring eggs and butter to room temperature. I left them on the counter top for 2 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Butter an 8″ x 4″ x 2.5″ loaf pan, or any six cup loaf or fluted tube pan.
• Sift together flour, salt and baking powder. I did not have cake flour on hand and made it myself. I took 1 ½ cups of all purpose flour in a bowl, removed 3 tbsp of flour out of it. Replace the flour with 3 tbsp of corn startch. Sifted the flour couple of times to mix the flour and hte corn startch.
• Lightly whisk together milk, vanilla extract and eggs.
• In a big bowl take the dry ingredients and mix it using an hand mixer for 30 seconds so that the ingredients mix well.
• Add the butter, half the egg mixture and continue to mix it until all dry ingredients become moist. Increase the speed to medium and beat for one more minute. My hand mixer has fold, mix, beat and whip options. I used the beat option here. This will aerate and give a nice structure to the batter.
• Add the remaining egg mixture in 2 batches, beating for 20-30 seconds after each addition. Scape down the batter.
• Pour the batter into the buttered pan, smooth the surface and bake for 55-65 minutes in a pre-heated oven. I baked my loaf for 55 minutes or bake it until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It is important that you insert the tooth pick in the middle to check if the cake is baked.
• Cool the cake on a rack for 10 minutes and flip it over. If you used a loaf pan as I did, carefully flip it over so that top is up.
• Let the cake cool completely before slicing it.

Note: (Copy pasting it from the sweet punch blog)

• For making Cake flour at home – Take one cup of all purpose flour and remove 2 tbsp from it.Replace the 2 tbsp flour with cornflour and sift together 2-3 times.Cake flour is ready to use.

Recipes posted this month in 2008, in 2009 and in 2010.