No, I am not making a turky (hell no!) but I did just try a bit of pound cake. I started with this recipe as a base and the knowledge that the traditional pound cake is a 1:1:1:1 ratio of eggs, flour, surgar, and butter. This is my first cake ever, and more of a quest to figure it out than create a yumo confection.
My end result for test Alpha:
- 1 cup unsifted cake flour.
- sifting in a colander proved nuts, so I just attacked in a measuring cup.
- 1/2 cup sugar.
- 1.5 stick of room temp’ butter.
- 3 eggs
- I only failed at the first egg, and lost most of the yolk.
- Being smarter than totally stupid, I used two containers: one to hold the eggs and one to crack/drain in.
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, since both my other half, my mother, and Google all agreed.
- My first go is more about science than taste!
- 1.5 sticks of butter
- seems excessive to me but as Paula Deen says, “Butter makes it better”, so I digress.
- I chopped it for ease of mixing.
- My mother suggested melting it.
- 3 tablespoons of milk
First I washed the pan, containers, tools, etc; let the butter, eggs, and milk sit out. Then I started to measure stuff out into containers. Got my eggs together and put the milk in, mixed them up with a rubber spatula and cut the butter into slices and greased the pan with some. Then while mixing for a bit between, added each the flour, sugar, some butter (maybe 2/3 of 1/4 a stick). Than I put in the extract and more butter, mashed and mixed that and set about getting in all the butter.
After a while of doing this with the rubber spatula and a old whisk, I saw it would take forever to get the chunks out of the batter, so I just switched to a hand mixer: first at low, than for a bit at speed and throttled back to low to finish it off. Poured it in the pan, switched on the oven to 350′ F and let the batter sit in the pan for a couple minutes while I made prep to clean; then I stuck it in and cleaned up after myself. In retrospect I should have taken a picture of the batter, as a gauge for next time.
Here is how it came out:
It came out soft and tasty, not overpowering and rather close to what I wanted really. Next experiment I think, will trade some butter for vegetable oil.
Of course, the moron^H^H^H^H^Hgeek has to have a test tasting :-).