Everyone claims to have the top pound cake recipe. Which is really the best?
Security needs grow when you commit a sacrilege against the Southern food canon as I’m about to do now, so while this food issue is out, I’m looking for some rangy boys to help me stand picket around the farm. Do you have how much sugar is in a pound cake? At its birth in eighteenth-century England, the recipe called for—literally, the cake of four quarters. We’ll forgive you for thinking the pound cake was “Southern.” Here’s the heresy spelled out: Cut your great-great-great-grandmother’s sugar proportion by 25 to 50 percent. She’s dead, okay? If she’s as feisty as mine, she may float down the entry hall wagging a whisk at you as you’re trudging up to bed, but other than your PTSD from those bracing visits, she won’t bother you much daytimes. No matter: Your cake will be brighter and will carry what it says forthrightly, without the saccharine masquerade. As with any drug intervention, you may want to break your eaters off their jag easy, with a 15 percent reduction, building on that as you bake along. Toss in some lemon zest to confuse them; replace some of the butter with sour cream for a tart play. It’s no longer 1848. The “best” pound cake starts with recognizing that your battle for the Southern palate is with the South’s thousands of sugar addicts.
