Vanilla Pound Cake

The American baker's canvas: a tight-crumbed vanilla pound cake with a gilded crust, fragrant with real vanilla bean and the clean sweetness of cultured butter

Origin: United States / United Kingdom

From the journey of Vanilla.

Pound cake (named for its original formula of one pound each of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs) is one of the oldest baked goods in the English-speaking world, documented in English cookbooks from the early 18th century. The American version, which entered the recipe canon of the Southern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, added vanilla as the defining aromatic at the point when Joseph Burnett's Boston extract (1847) made pure vanilla widely available. In the American South, pound cake is the foundation of baking culture: it is the cake brought to funerals, baked for church socials, presented to new neighbours, and passed down generation to generation with personalised modifications: the addition of sour cream, lemon zest, or cream cheese to the basic formula. The vanilla pound cake is its purest expression: the vanilla must carry everything against the richness of the butter, and when it is good, it is one of the most satisfying things a home oven can produce: a tight, dense crumb that is somehow also tender, a gilded top crust that is the baker's reward, and a fragrance when slicing that is the essence of what a domestic kitchen should smell like.

Ingredients

cake

  • 340 g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 300 g caster (superfine) sugar
  • 4 eggs, at room temperature
  • 300 g plain (all-purpose) flour
  • 0.5 tsp fine sea salt
  • 0.5 tsp baking powder
  • 120 ml sour cream or full-fat plain yoghurt, the acidity gives a more tender crumb

vanilla

  • 1 vanilla pod, split and scraped, seeds only
  • 2 tsp pure vanilla extract, use both pod and extract for maximum depth

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 165°C (325°F, fan 145°C). Grease a 23cm × 13cm (9 × 5 inch) loaf tin or a 25cm (10-inch) Bundt tin generously with butter, then dust with flour.
  2. Beat butter and sugar together until very pale and fluffy; at least 5 minutes with a stand mixer, or 8 minutes with a hand mixer. This extended creaming is the foundation of the pound cake's texture.
  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla seeds and extract. If the mixture curdles, add 1 tablespoon of flour and continue; it will come together.
  4. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together. Add to the butter mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream, beginning and ending with flour. Mix until just combined; do not over-mix.
  5. Pour into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Bake for 60-70 minutes (loaf) or 55-65 minutes (Bundt) until deep golden brown, the top is cracked along the centre, and a skewer inserted in the deepest part comes out clean.
  6. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Eat warm or at room temperature: the flavour develops over the first 24 hours as the vanilla permeates the entire cake.

Notes

Pound cake keeps at room temperature, wrapped in foil, for up to 5 days; it improves on the second day. Slice and toast lightly under the grill for the best version: the buttery crust crisps, the interior warms, and the vanilla comes forward. Serve plain, with whipped cream and berries, or with vanilla ice cream and warm caramel sauce. Using both vanilla pod seeds and extract is deliberate: the pod gives complexity and those characteristic black flecks; the extract gives a cleaner, sharper vanilla top note.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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