So in preparation for the fondue party this evening I've attempted to make a pound cake for dipping. The only pound cake I can recall every eating in my life is Entenmann's and according to the recipe I followed in Christopher Kimball's The Dessert Bible: "Pound cake is a tricky recipe" (158).
Apparently what makes it so tricky is that there is no chemical leavening agent (baking powder or baking soda). Without this the way to get the cake right is to have the butter and eggs at the right temperature. {For a more info about the importance of butter check out "Butter Holds the Secret to Cookies that Sing"}Butter should be creamed when it is between 65 and 67 degrees, and eggs should be room temperature. In my house I think it takes a little over a half hour for butter out of the fridge to reach that temperature - without a thermometer it's hard to gauge, but according to Kimball it should bend easily, but not too much.
If you get the temperature right, the mix of sugar, butter and eggs should look dull and thick, NOT grainy or separated. So even though I walked into the recipe thinking I nailed the temperatures after I had added about half the eggs the batter changed from dull and thick to separated and grainy. Kimball suggests wrapping a hot towel around the bowl while you mix to correct the temperatures. The hot water situation in my kitchen isn't the best, and I'm generally impatient, so I took my mixing bowl out into the Texas sun and stirred until the batter looked about right.
What is so interesting about making this cake is correcting temperature mistakes. I've tried twice, with little success (tasted good both times, but fell apart once, and didn't rise properly the second time) to make this Strawberry Cake from scratch, and I think after this I have a better idea of how to handle my ingredients.
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