I love pound cake. It's good on its own or with fresh fruit, stewed fruit, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, ice cream, hand cream, ...
Suffice it to say I've been looking for a good recipe for a classic pound cake. Fortunately, I came across Ina Garten's recipe for Lemon Yogurt Cake before I had to dedicate many sticks of butter to experimentation. Ina uses yogurt and oil in place of all that butter and milk, and while it may not qualify as a true pound cake, this loaf is moist with so much flavour. I've made her original lemon cake, I've made Smitten Kitchen's even better grapefruit version, and this time, I used fresh-squeezed orange juice and zest in place of lemon and cut the sugar to a scant cup, ditching the glaze in favour of some chocolate chunk pieces (on sale, Mom!) and scraping the seeds from one of the vanilla pods in my homemade extract. The result?
I've definitely found my standby pound cake recipe. On the side is a fruit salad (obviously... ) of ataulfo mango, red grapes, pomelo, navel orange and delicious cara cara orange. The mint is just for show. I know the cake looks white and bland and boring in the picture, but the step after baking -- poking holes on the top of the warm cake and pouring fresh juice over it -- ensures a moist, delicate and fragrant crumb.
This cake is idiot-proof!
I'm enjoying the lemon loaf right now and it's absolutely delicious. Thank you for another awesome recipe! I was out of vanilla and choc chips, so used almond extract and cranberries instead and it turned out surprisingly well.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds awesome! What I like about the recipe is how amenable it is to variations of flavourings and additions. I think almond extract and fresh raspberries would be awesome with lemon (or orange), too!
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