You know what they call Pound Cake in Paris?

Because I couldn't get a picture of my fully clogged arteries

I am a firm believer that life is too short to count calories. But tonight, as I was making Moosewood’s Pound Cake and watching “The West Wing”, something Leo McGarry said resonated with me: “There are two things in the world you never want to let people see how you make ‘em—laws and sausages.” I would argue that pound cake should be added to that list. Though I would never condone abandoning dessert, I never really realized just how intense of a cake this really is: 6 eggs, 3 cups of sugar, 1 POUND (is that why they call it pound cake??) of butter. Basically, it’s delicious. 

            Being from the South, I obviously adore pound cake. My grandma is a baking expert and always seems to have a loaf somewhere in her house. Now, you can make several flavor variations of pound cake; Moosewood includes lemon, blueberry, and mocha-swirl. But basic pound cake, in its beautiful simplicity, is flavored like sugar.

            You mix together the ingredients very slowly—even the eggs have to be added one at a time—and the final result is an incredibly thick, gooey batter. Mine was a bit lumpy; I suspect my un-melted, un-softened butter is the culprit. Ever wonder what happens when you take a hand mixer to refrigerated butter? It goes all over your apartment.

            I also used soymilk instead of regular milk because I don’t drink regular milk (yay for latent lactose intolerance!) I cook with soymilk all the time, so I don’t anticipate it being a big problem. Unfortunately, soymilk has the distinct honor of looking absolutely disgusting. It’s kind of brownish-beige and this hue was only intensified when I had to mix it with the vanilla extract. Thankfully, the eggs turned the rest of the mixture a very bright yellow. The whole bowl looked like runny scrambled eggs—like you would see in one of those huge tureens at a breakfast buffet.

            I don’t own a Bundt pan, so I made two smaller pound cake loaves in bread tins. I didn’t exactly portion the batter out evenly because I wasn’t paying attention and I don’t care that much. I’m slightly worried, again, about how my attempt at “buttering the pan” is going to go. I feel like I should just give in and use PAM instead of following Moosewood’s instructions. Or buy one of those fancy brushes and melt the butter first.

            Moosewood states that the expected baking time for this recipe is “60 to 60 minutes”. I tested mine right after 60 minutes but the knife didn’t come out clean. The center of the cake was still very runny. The edges of the cake were brown, so I turned the oven off after 65 minutes and let the cake continue cooking, checking it every five minutes. The less full pan was done after about 75 minutes. The other pan was overflowing a bit and still quite runny. It ended up taking almost 80 minutes to get the cake cooked all the way through.

The edges of both were blackened, but once I popped them out of their pans, the inside edges were brown and not overly crispy. I tried to scrape off the truly black bits, but honestly, it wasn’t that much. The second cake was less dark than the first, however, there was a rather thick crust around the whole cake.

            The inside of the cake was absolutely delicious: very buttery, rich, still warm, and perfectly paired with some excellent “West Wing” reruns. Last week of classes, here we go!

And, PS, I have no idea what they call Pound Cake in Paris. I just know how to make Tarantino movie references.