Pound cake is a dense, buttery cake traditionally made with equal parts flour, eggs, sugar, and butter. Variations include using alternative ingredients for moisture and adding flavorings such as vanilla or fruit. Modern bakers often make smaller cakes to avoid waste.
Pound cake is a popular dessert cake in the United States, particularly the South, as well as parts of Europe and Latin America. It is often shaped like a loaf and is golden yellow in color, with a rich, buttery flavor and a medium-heavy density. Pound cake gets its name from the fact that it traditionally contains one pound (453.59 grams) of each of its four ingredients: flour, eggs, sugar and butter. Many variations of this traditional recipe have been developed over time, most of which alter the texture or flavor of the pie. However, many of these variations still retain the practice of using equal measures of the recipe’s main ingredients.
The substantial quantities of ingredients required by a traditional pound cake recipe result in a fairly large cake that it can become stale before it can be fully consumed. To avoid waste, many modern bakers choose to make smaller cakes by reducing the amount of each of these ingredients to a one-to-one ratio. For example, rather than using one pound (453.59 grams) of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar, a baker might use one-half pound (226.79 grams) of each.
Traditional pound cake can dry out pretty quickly. In order to promote a moist texture that resists dryness, some cooks substitute alternative ingredients for some or all of the cake’s butter. Common substitutions include vegetable oil and sour cream. While vegetable oil can create a very moist cake, many find it lacks the rich, pleasant flavor of butter. Sour cream typically creates a moist cake with a tangy flavor, which some find off-putting, but others find it is a taste improvement over regular pound cake.
Other pound cake recipes call for the addition of various flavoring agents to give the taste of the cake an extra layer of complexity. Two of the most common flavoring extracts used in pound cake are vanilla and almond extracts. Also commonly used are fruit juices and extracts, such as lemon, strawberry or pineapple flavoring.
European interpretations of the traditional pound cake often call for the addition of finely chopped dried fruit, such as raisins, currants and glazed cherries, to the cake batter. Some recipes also include nuts, which are baked into the cake or used as part of a topping mix. Still others call for the inclusion of cocoa powder, which infuses the cake with a chocolate flavor.
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