we're making an easy delicious and just plain amazing vanilla pound cake pound for pound it's the best you've ever had let's get started first off I'm adding one and a half cups or a hundred and eighty grams of all-purpose flour into a large bowl with a sifter over it 180 exactly 1 teaspoon of salt for balance it makes a big difference and half a teaspoon of baking powder for leavening traditionally a pound cake was actually a pound of butter a pound of eggs and a pound of flour I made that recipe and it was not the best cake I've ever had in my life
so I spent some time tweaking it and this is a really nice moist delicious version that you can gussy up with different flavors if you like sift this into your bowl whisk it up and we're gonna set it aside now it's time for the butter into the bowl of my stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment I'm adding one cup or 226 grams of unsalted butter and it is a they're still working getting done on the house today
we are not finished in it is a very very cold day here so actually it's like microwave this butter just a little bit at half power like ten seconds to warm it up to room temperature room temperature means that you can put your finger on the butter and leave like an indent when you press in lightly it's not gonna melt away it's not going to be too firm that's what room temperature means
let's cream it up just for a second there we go all right once that started one cup or 200 grams of sugar after your butter is like kind of nice and fluffy to scrape the bold and really quick while the mixer is running on like medium-low we're gonna add the eggs and one at a time let the eggs incorporate don't dump them all at once it's just Messier that way okay
so now scrape that bowl down again I have like an egg soup in the middle and hard butter on the outside I'm not that run for a minute just the things get nice and homogeneous that looks pretty good if you see tiny clumps of butter it's okay it'll all work out in the bake so you know I love some sour cream and cakes it gives you a lot of moisture a little bit of Tang and it's delicious if you can't find it where you live plain yogurt works amazingly
well too you could also sub in buttermilk instead all right one half of a cup which is 120 ml although I don't know sour cream is out of grams the situation or milliliters
let's mix it up this recipe has two tablespoons are about 30 milliliters of vanilla and I happened to get a really nice gift box from Nielson Massey with all the different vanilla from the world this one's Mexican vanilla which I'm using because of my heritage I'll taste a little bit different so it's really neat to kind of just sample the slight differences in those orchids my mom was horrified that I didn't use any zest in this recipe she would always have an orange or lemon zest and you can do that too I'm keeping it kind of like a standard pound cake that you can alter however you'd like if you're going for the zest just add in about a tablespoon or two it'll be amazing and very fragran okay
let's mix that up one last time oh this is so nice I'm just going to dump the flour in and then mix it up on low until it's almost just combined and then it'll just finish it off by hand you always want to scrape the bowl down anyways so you might as well scrape and do a little bit of hand to mixing it gives you a nice control of the batter and you're gonna be sure not to like over activate and you have that gluten and get like a bready cake no one wants a bready cake alright scraping the bowl down there's a lot of flour on the sides and some butter on the bottom so just give it a final mix and I am seeing like these little granules of butter it's just because it's cold here right now don't worry about it just like in my vanilla cake if you see those little butter pieces it'll melt and be delicious in the oven not a problem just to show you what I mean with the butter look this is run temperature but it is hard too hard for baking it is good though for rubbing onto your pan
we need to butter and flour this pan so everything releases nicely and if you want you could just use parchment paper that works amazingly well too and it lifts out even easier but I'll be buttering and flowering today taking it out of school this is a 1 and 1/2 pound loaf pan but you know any loaf pan will do basically alright and then if there's any globs just use your clean fingers to spread it to the edge kick around about a tablespoon of flour get it all the way up to the sides in a classic pound cake will have like that nice crack in the center it'll be a little bit caramelized on the edges it's not like a layer cake where you know I'm kind of a crazy person and want it to be like perfectly light colored very soft on the sides you want like kind of a bit of a almost crunch for the very edge gives you a nice play of textures meanwhile all the people that like that on their regular layer cakes are like that's that I'm talking about alright put the excess back and we're ready to pour just pour that cake batter right in there it'll self level out don't worry this goes into the oven center rack 350 Fahrenheit for about 40 minutes
you'll see kind of golden brown at the edge cracked on top with you know skewer coming out clean in the center it'll be amazing let's put her in there there's something just so satisfying about a plain loaf cake I don't know what it is but it's just like that little something extra like piece of toast no no no I'll have some pound cake I'm fine thanks start in the morning off right if you liked this recipe check out my cake playlist all my favorite cakes so many different recipes and you will find one at least to fall in love with okay time for a bite it just has the perfect crumb and it's kind of like really substantial perfectly sweet and just like kind of crisp on the outside on the caramelized edges
