Jenni’s Best Pound Cake Recipe

I consider myself a bit of a pound cake snob. I grew up eating my mom’s chocolate pound cake, which is one of my favorite cakes ever.  She also makes a mean almond pound cake as well as a really incredible cranberry-orange one.

One of the first cakes I ever tried to make was mom’s chocolate pound cake.  I learned very quickly that how you put the batter together has a huge impact on the resulting batter.  I had no idea what the creaming method was, and when the recipe said to add the eggs, I did.  All at once.  I ended up with a very thin batter, when my mom’s batter was always thick and fluffy.

Since that first rather botched attempt, I’ve learned a lot about how to successfully put together a great cake batter, sometimes painfully.  And while I enjoy an airy genoise or a moist butter cake, my favorite cake is still pound cake.  I love the tight crumb, the way is slices and toasts so beautifully, and the way it melts in my mouth.

A few months ago, a friend sent me a recipe for pound cake that she said was the best she’d ever had.  Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I tweaked it some, based on things I’ve learned myself and on a few ideas from Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise.  And here it is—Van Halen Pound Cake.  Named by a DJ friend of mine after Van Halen’s song of the same name, I’ve made several variations of this cake, and it is always excellent.  This is the basic recipe, which I call the Whipped Cream Van Halen Pound Cake.

Give it a try, and tell me what you think.

Whipped Cream Van Halen Pound Cake

Ingredients:

• 13 oz cake flour (I use Swan’s Down)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 10 oz granulated sugar
• 10 oz brown sugar (light or dark), free of lumps
• 12 oz (3 sticks) butter, at cool room temperature
• 5 large eggs
• 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup heavy cream, very softly whipped

How to Make at Home

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Thoroughly spray a 10-cup Bundt pan with nonstick spray.  Sprinkle in about ½ cup all purpose flour and rotate the pan to coat the interior with the flour.  Make sure to get the flour up the sides of the pan as well as up the central tube.  Turn the pan upside down and firmly knock out the excess flour.  Set aside.

Whisk together the cake flour, salt and baking powder.  Set aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and soft, scraping bowl as necessary.

Add the sugars and cream on medium-high speed until very light and fluffy—5-7 minutes.  Scrape the bowl.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating them in–first on low, and then medium speed–for a total of about 20 seconds before adding the next.  Scrape bowl thoroughly between each addition.

Beat in the vanilla.

On low speed, mix in the dry ingredients in two additions.  Mix just until the flour is moistened.  The batter will be a little lumpy.  That’s okay.

Using a whisk, whip the cream until thick.  The whisk should leave tracks in the cream that will fill in in a couple of seconds.  The cream should still flow—it should not be whipped even to soft peaks.  This takes about 2 minutes.  If you’d rather, you can whip the cream with a hand mixer.  Conversely, you can whip the cream in the stand mixer, transferring it to a bowl and holding it in the refrigerator before creaming the butter.

Add the cream and mix it in on low speed for about 5 seconds.  Stop the mixer, and finish mixing the batter by hand, folding rather than stirring, until the batter is free of lumps and the cream is gently but thoroughly mixed in.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.  I usually shake the pan as well to evenly distribute the batter.

Bake on the middle rack until the cake is well risen, golden brown and springs back when touched on the top.  You can also test the cake with a wooden skewer or toothpick.  If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is done.  The cake will just be pulling away from the sides of the pan.  This takes about an hour in my oven.  I usually turn the pan after about 40 minutes, just to ensure even baking.

Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for half an hour.

Turn out onto a rack and cool completely.

Glaze when cool.  Store at room temperature for two days or refrigerate.  If refrigerating, make sure to let the cake come to room temperature before serving.

Glaze

Ingredients:

• About 2 cups of 10x powdered sugar
• Pinch of salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• Enough milk or half and half to make a thick but pourable glaze

How to Make at Home

Place a piece of parchment or tin foil under the cooling rack holding the cake to catch any drips.

In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar and salt together.

Add the vanilla and about 2 tablespoons of dairy.  Whisk thoroughly.  Add more dairy, just a bit at a time, until you have a very thick but smooth paste.  Test it by holding some up on the whisk.  It should flow very slowly off the end of the whisk and lay on top of the rest of the glaze for a few seconds before sinking back in.

Once you are pleased with the glaze consistency, spoon/pour over the cake and let slowly run down the sides.  If your glaze is thick enough, it will stop running before it drips onto the paper under the rack.  If the glaze is a little thin, scrape the excess glaze off the paper and pour back onto the cake.

Let the glaze set for an hour.

I hope you enjoy this cake, RG—please let me know how it turns out and if you have any questions.

Chef Jenni
Pastry Chef Online

Related Topics

The Art of Baking

How To Make a Traditional Pumpkin Pie

Classic Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Pumpkin pie is basically a custard pie.  It contains dairy, and is thickened with eggs and sits in a wonderful, flaky pie crust like the one we just talked about a couple of days ago.  The pumpkin and spices evoke the aromas and flavors of fall, and more specifically, one of my favorite food holidays - Thanksgiving.

Sometimes, we want to break out of the traditional mold and make a daring dessert and I have no problem with that.  In fact, as an alternative to pumpkin pie this year, I suggest you check out my good friend Chef Jenni’s Gingered Pumpkin Mascarpone Cheesecake. It’s different and definitely daring.

But for those of you who have tried something new only to be met by sad faces at the table and have your family say, “It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s just that it’s not what we usually have.  It’s not what we look forward to on Thanksgiving.”  Avoid those sad faces around your holiday table and give the folks what they want, but make it the best pumpkin pie you can.  Dare to be traditional!

Creamy Pumpkin Pie

One of my issues with pumpkin pie is that I can’t taste the pumpkin.  Dial back the spicing a bit and up the salt to bring out the flavor in the pumpkin. Not too much salt but add some, taste and adjust.

Ingredients:

• 1 pastry shell - check out my post on store bought or homemade pastry shells
• 1 - 14 0z. can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1 (16 oz.) can pumpkin

How to Make at Home

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line a deep dish pie pan with pastry dough.  Trim, crimp and parbake.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg and yolk until light and uniform in color and texture.

Add the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, sweetened condensed milk and pumpkin and whisk until smooth.

Cover the custard and let sit in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes and up to four hours.  This step ensures a creamy end product.

Strain the custard through a mesh strainer, just to remove any pumpkin fiber.

Pour the custard into the pie shell and bake in the center rack of the oven until the custard just barely jiggles in the center when you shake the pie pan, 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your oven.  You might need to cover the pie crust during the last thirty minutes of baking to prevent over-browning.

Cool at room temperature for an hour and then refrigerate.  Cover with plastic wrap once the pie has reached refrigerator temperature.  This will reduce and hopefully prevent condensation from forming on the surface of your pie.

Remove from the refrigerator about half an hour before serving to take the chill off the pie.  The flavor will be more pronounced if it is allowed to warm a bit before eating.

For an added note of fall, serve with whipped cream sweetened with a bit of maple syrup.

Related Topics

How to Make a Flaky Pie Crust

How to Line a Pie Pan

Pumpkin Pie - Three Speeds

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

When I was a kid I was given my choice of cake my mom would make for my birthday. I’m not sure why but I always asked for pineapple upside down cake. It may be that I just liked the taste of pineapple with a classic yellow cake mix or it was the only cake my mom knew how to make. I’m not sure.

Yesterday was my birthday, and my 11 year old daughter asked me what kind of cake I would like.  I flashed back to when I was her age and requested pineapple upside down cake and sure enough she made it for me with very little help on my part. All I did was facilitate her getting the cast iron skillet into the oven, removing it and flipping it onto a plate. The rest she did herself with some additional help from her friend Duncan as in Duncan Hines Moist Classic Yellow Cake. I was impressed.

Now you can make your own cake batter from scratch, and I will post a recipe for that too but when in a hurry or are just a kid doing it for the first time, there is nothing wrong with a little commercial cake mix. It just cuts out a few steps and speeds up the process.

When my mom made her pineapple upside down cake, she used a rectangular bake pan and crushed pineapple but for this recipe, we used a large cast iron skillet and pineapple slices. My mom always served her pineapple upside down cake with real whip cream so I taught my daughter how to make it herself.

We prepared a great dinner of grilled steaks with a port wine demi glace sauce, steamed yellow squash and rice pilaf, but the highlight of the meal and the one that took me back to my childhood was the cake. It was a great night.

Important: Although my daughter prepared most of this cake by herself, I was still there watching what she was doing especially since she was working with the stove top and oven.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 can of pineapple slices
• Some maraschino cherries
• 1 box of your favorite yellow cake mix

How to Prepare

I used a large cast iron pan because it is heavy and I can stick it into the oven without having to worry about it burning the bottom of the cake. You can prepare the topping in a sauce pan and transfer it to a cake pan with 2 inch high sides but then you have two pans to clean up.

1) Preheat your oven to 350°F degrees.

2) Heat your pan over medium heat, add the butter and brown sugar to it and let the brown sugar melt and the mixture start to boil. My daughter asked me how to measure out 2/3 cup of butter and I told her she can let it come to room temperature and use a measuring cup or look at the butter wrapper for the conveniently marked measurements. She opted for the second idea.

3) When the butter and brown sugar start boiling, remove from heat and start adding whole pineapple slices to the bottom of the pan. Cut some remaining slices in half and line the edge of the cast iron pan with the half pieces. Add some cherries to the holes in the whole pineapple slices and you are ready for the yellow cake batter.

4) Prepare the box of yellow cake mix following the directions on the box.  The recipe my daughter followed called for three eggs and for some reason she only added two but the end result was fine. I’m not sure how the third egg would have changed the taste, but her version was delicious.

5) When the cake batter is ready, pour the cake mix into the cast iron pan and bake for  the amount of time suggested on the cake box. You know it’s done when you can stick a toothpick into the cake and it comes out clean. My daughter’s cake took a little longer than the recipe said it would which is why the toothpick test is a better indicator.

6) When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and immediately loosen the side of the cake from the pan with a dinner knife and let it cool for a few minutes. Once cooled down some, place a plate on top of the pan and flip it over. It should come out easily looking delicious and ready to eat.

7) Whip up some homemade whip cream, add some birthday candles and you are ready to blow.

Yellow Cake From Scratch

For those of you who would like to make your moist yellow cake from scratch, here is a simple recipe for you:

Basic Yellow Cake

Ingredients:

• 6.5 oz. sifted cake flour
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 oz (1 stick unsalted butter) at cool
• room temperature
• 1 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs plus
• 1 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 cup milk (for pineapple upside down cake, substitute pineapple juice for the milk)

How to Make at Home

This cake is made using The Creaming Method, where fats are mixed with sugar to form a mixture that is either smooth and creamy (cookie dough) or light and fluffy (cakes).

1) Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together really well.  Set aside.

2) Whisk the vanilla and milk together and set aside.

3) In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter on medium speed.  Add the sugar, and continue to cream until light and fluffy.  Scrape the bowl as necessary.

4) Add each egg, one at a time, mixing on low to begin with and then increasing the speed to medium or medium-high.  Scrape the bowl between additions.

5) With the mixer on the lowest speed, add half of the flour mixture.  Beat until just incorporated.

6) Add half the milk mixture, and mix in on low speed.  Scrape the bowl and mix for a few more seconds.

7) Add half of the remaining flour mixture, followed by the rest of the milk.  Finish by adding the rest of the flour, and beat until just incorporated.

Spoon the batter evenly over the pineapple layer and smooth gently.

9) Follow the directions for baking pineapple upside down cake, above.