Requested Pound Cake recipe.

[norgeway]

Recently I commented about the baking abilities of a Kenmore range, and how my neighbor,"Who was also a cousin" made the best and most beautiful pound cake I ever saw and tasted...Well, its just the same recipe most older Southern cooks use..But Wilma B Laney sure could make it better than anyone else I ever knew! Including her Aunt...who was my Grandmother, Here it is in memory of Wilma, Who was just like another Aunt to me, Wilma Beach Laney, 1912-2000.
3 cups flour.." I think she used Red Band which is no longer made.
3 cups sugar
2 sticks margarine
1/2 cup Crisco
6 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon.

Cream margarine,Crisco and sugar in a big Melmac bowl with a Avocado green Sunbeam Burst Of Power portable mixer....add eggs 1 at a time beating well with the burst of power button held down!..add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk, beat well between additions, add flavorings, mix a minute or two longer on high speed...with the button held down, pour into a greased and floured tube pan, call Momma "My great Aunt and Wilmas Mother who lived in the upstairs apartment, and have her turn on her 1967 TOL 30 inch Lady Kenmore range to 350...Carry cake upstairs and bake 1 1/2 hours...For some reason this turned out a more beautiful and better cake than I have ever been able to make, the crust was beautiful, and it always rose above the top of the pan!Aunt Cordie Beach, My Great Aunt and Wilmas mother made almost as good a cake...and she used a 1950s chrome Dormey portable.

 

[norgeway]

As a child..

I loved to go to Wilma and Ralphs, they were always to me like an Aunt and Uncle, Ralph who died in 1982 was my fishing buddy, Two things Wilma made that without question were better than anyone elses I have ever eaten, that pound cake and her cornbread...I never figured out that she did anything different, but they were the best!..of course I knew better to tell my Grandmother that!!LOL....Her cornbread, as well as my Mothers was TERRIBLE!!!!!

 

[jkbff]

My mother's corn bread leaves a lot to be desired when she isn't focused.. (She some times mixes the baking soda and powder up cause her games are going on the computer...)

I am definitely going to try this

I need to find an angel food pan.. I wished I had Grandma's pans...

Reading this and some of the other food threads makes me sad that our current life isn't like what the past was when people actually stayed home and cooked. Everyone is too busy keeping up with the Jones'.

 

[polkanut]

<span style="font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;">I have my great-grandmother's dark tin angel food pan, and it bakes better than any other tube pan I've tried.</span>

 

[ken]

Well I guess I shouldnt even bother to make the pound cake. I know it wont be as good as I dont have a Melmac mixing bowl or an Avocado green Sunbeam Burst of Power mixer. And I definitely dont have a 67 Kenmore range to bake it in. It wont be any comparison.

Funny you also mention cornbread. I made cornbread over the weekend and followed Kevin's (vintagekitchen) advice about how his grandmother always baked it in a very hot preheated cast iron frying pan. I also cut way down on the sugar in the recipe as he also mentioned thats the traditional southern way of making it. I definitely liked it better. The hot pan gave it a nice crust. And I preferred the taste with less sugar.

Like Josh states something has been lost with the decreasing of traditional lifestyles. My mother didnt work outside the home and I was at home with her until I went to kindergarten at five. Some of my earliest memories are of watching her doing washing/ironing and baking. I used to set a foot stool in front of the stove and watch whatever was in the oven bake. The same as I would open the lid on the GE Filter-Flo and watch that do its job.

Thanks for the recipe Hans. Im going to make the pound cake and take to work as my boss is always asking for me to bring in a pound cake for him.

 

[ken]

Here it is. Thank you Wilma!

So I made Hans' pound cake last night. It certainly rose above the top of the pan like Hans remembered. Brought to the office this morning. I already sampled it and its very good. I used butter instead of margarine. And I used 1 1/2 t of vanilla and a heaping (if you can have such a thing with liquid) t of lemon extract. As you can see I dressed it up a little with some powered sugar.

 

[tomturbomatic]

That cake is also very good with butternut extract which is another old baking flavoring.

 

[ken]

Well the cake is a hit! Everyone here at work is saying how good it is. One coworker went into detail describing just how moist and tasty it is. And how the crust adds to it.

 

[circlew]

Oh, that looks so good!

I might make it if I knew where I put my mixer.

 

[ken]

Just noticed my spelling error above. I didnt used powered sugar on the cake. I used powdered sugar. Then again maybe thats why everyone seemed to have so much energy here at work today! LOL

 

[whirlcool]

Powered Suar ...

I loved it!

 

[tomturbomatic]

That's like a comment I read for Ruby Dee yesterday, "Rest in Power."

 

[jkbff]

So I bought a tube pan I'm gonna try this tonight or tomorrow.

But reading through the recipe, would one not want to preheat the oven or just turn the oven on and throw the cake in..

Experience is telling me to preheat the oven but one never knows..

 

[ken]

I always preheat the oven. I made the pound cake again last week but this time I used an angel food cake pan which was larger in both diameter and depth. This time the cake didnt rise above the top of the pan. Dont know exactly why but I thought the cake was better the first time when I used the smaller tube pan.

P.S. Just what are those tabs on the edge of an angel food pan for? Are they used to flip it over onto to cool? As I understand it with an angel food cake you invert the pan on a funnel to cool. And just why do you cool an angel cake upside down in the first place?

 

[maytagbear]

Yes, the "tabs" on an angel food cake

pan are for turning upside down and letting the cake cool. If the tube pan you have does NOT have tabs, invert the cake in its pan over a longneck bottle.

If a foam-type cake; angel food, sponge, or chiffon are NOT inverted to cool, they will shrink, shrink, shrink, and be very tough, ugly, and generally a sad waste of ingredients and time.

Changing the size and essential shape of a cake pan will change the texture/density, and usually not for the better. Dense cakes with fat in them, like the carrot cake I have posted here several times, can be baked successfully in either a plain tube (angel food) pan, a large (12 cup)bundt, or a 13x9. Baking in the 13x9 saves over 15 minutes in oven time.......

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[ken]

Thanks for the info Lawrence. What does inverting the pan to cool do for the cake in comparison to leaving upright to cool? Is it to reduce moisture loss?

 

[retromania]

Red Band

I did not know Red Band is no longer available. I generally use King Arthur. Red Band is what my mother used. And I do miss her and her cooking.

 

[norgeway]

Re Red Band..

My Maternal Grandmother used it exclusively,My Dads Mother used Southern Biscuit, Most people I knew used one or the other, I knew of a few people who used Gold Medal or Pillsbury for yeast breads, but not biscuits, I never heard of King Arthur until lately, its unbleached, and bad for you or not, I only used bleached flour, grey biscuits are not pretty!!lol.

 

[maytagbear]

Not inverted? Not turned upside down?

The will fall, go flat, be about half an inch high, be tough, be a waste of precious time and ingredients, Ken.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[mikael3]

Lammas Day.

I've been eyeing this recipe for a while, and I finally found the excuse to make it. Since it's Lammas Day and--more importantly--the weather in Atlanta has been strangely cool all week, I decided to heat up the kitchen and bake a cake. I brought it to the office with a summer fruit cocktail I made a couple of days ago, and some sweetened sour cream.

The cake is just absolutely fantastic, very much like the pound cakes I remember from when I was young. The texture is perfect, dense but not heavy. Everyone just loves it.

When I saw the shortening as an ingredient, I figured this had to be an old recipe. Then I saw it had 3 cups of sugar!!! YIKES!!! But of course, that's what makes the cake so good and old-fashioned. At least it's worth the calories.

Thanks for the great recipe, Hans. This is a real keeper.

 

[gfm8959]

You left something out...

What type of mixer did you make it with?!! You've inspired me to make one today also

 

[mikael3]

I have to confess, I didn't use any of the specified equipment, and I was hoping no one would notice!! But since I've been busted, all I can say is, "Father, I have sinned."

I mixed the batter in my 20-year-old Kitchenaid Pro-600 mixer (in Williams-Sonoma blue). I put it into a Bundt 'Star' pan. And I baked the cake in a Breville Convection Toaster Oven!!! You wouldn't think that would be possible; but in Atlanta, I'll try anything to beat the heat.

 

[frontloaderfan]

Pound Cake

Since I am a baker by trade, I would like to add a tip here:

Instead of the margarine/shortening, try using all unsalted butter instead. Not only does it improve the taste, it is also not as bad for you. Margarine is one molecule away from being plastic, IIRC. Shortening is a tasteless vegetable fat which has a higher melting point than real butter, which makes it stick to the palate. Where I work, I have had to convince the boss that using real butter is worth the increase in the cost of ingredients. In Germany, we rarely ever used anything except real butter in all our cakes.

Since this is Hans' grandmother's recipe, I'm thinking it's most likely from the war era, when butter was in short supply. Back then, most recipes called for alternative fats to butter.

This, however, is just a well-meant suggestion, and in no way a slam to anyone's nan

 

[norgeway]

Actually..

It was a Cousins recipe...but really the standard pound cake recipe around home, My family switched to margarine back when the doctors all were telling people it was good for you and butter was bad,,,I know this sounds strange, but I like margarine better than butter ...LOL!Butter is hard to spread, and does not taste as good on biscuits.

 

[frontloaderfan]

Oops! Sorry 'bout that. Your COUSIN'S recipe then

I have heard from a lot people in the know that margarine is worse for you than butter, but then again, they change what they say ever few weeks anyway.

Butter is, well, like buttah if you let it reach room temp...

 

[norgeway]

I may try to switch..

Butter really does bake nicely, and there is no substitute for some things such as mashed potatos....

 

[mikael3]

I should mention that I used butter in place of margarine, but I did include the shortening as indicated. Shortening totally changes the texture of baked goods in a way that other fats do not, and when used properly, it makes for an excellent result.

After trying this recipe--which is so similar to others I have, and yet not quite the same--I'm pretty sure the shortening is the ingredient I've missed in the past that produces the texture I remember from my childhood.

 

[tolivac]

I USED to use margerine and Smart stuff whatever it was-then tried butter MUCH BETTER.Scientists are now finding out that what was thought to be bad in the past--is no longer true.Butter and eggs are actually BETTER for you.Just got tired of the fake tastes of margerine and related items.