Before we leave the cakes at the beginning of our Shirley Project, I did want to try for once the original poundcake: a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, and a dozen eggs. A dozen eggs or a pound of eggs? Turns out they’re about the same if you mean old-fashioned medium-sized eggs. For modern large eggs, a pound of eggs is more like 9 eggs.
So I made a Third of a Pound Cake:
10 Tablespoons of butter
5.25 oz of sugar
5.25 oz of flour
3 eggs
plus a pinch of salt.
I preheated my oven to 350°, put my pizza stone on a rack in the lower third of the oven, and greased a loaf pan.
I beat the butter and sugar in my stand mixer for a solid 10 minutes, trying to work as much air into the mixture as I could. (Mighty arms those old bakers had.)
Then I added some of the flour and one egg and beat them till they were just mixed in; some more of the flour and the second egg, ditto; the end of the flour and the third egg, the same. I scraped the bowl and the beater down well, stirred the scrapings in lightly, and then spooned the batter into my loaf pan. Following Margaret’s good counsel, I banged the loaf pan repeatedly to help the batter level out. Into the oven for 35 minutes.
And how was it? Definitely less sweet than any of the other cakes, and definitely drier. Mark and I liked the un-sweetness. The dryness was useful when I wanted to dunk a piece of cake in coffee or hot chocolate, or to crumble it with mixed cut fruit, but a little severe on its own. Third of a Poundcake tasted like something a Jane Austen family would have at teatime, nourishing and unremarkably pleasant.
(To read through the whole Shirley Project so far, go up to the Search Box at the top of the page and ask for Shirley.)
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