we're making an easy, delicious pound cake.

So let's get started.

First off, set your oven to 350 so it's nice and hot.

And now, in a medium bowl,

we're gonna combine our dry ingredients,

starting with 1 1/2 cups or 180 grams of flour.

I want my pound cake to be melt-in-your-mouth amazing,

and step one for that is not over-measuring your flour.

For some contrast, I'm adding one teaspoon of salt.

Here we go.

And to puff things up, half a teaspoon of baking powder.

This is not in the original pound cake.

The original pound cake recipe from the 1700s in England

was a pound of flour, a pound of butter,

a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs,

and it made a big four pound dense cake that you could share

and transport easily,

and honestly, I've made it before just as on a lark.

I wanted to see what it was like

and I definitely prefer the contemporary version.

Grab a whisk, give that a good mix.

We really wanna distribute the salt and baking powder

and set that aside.

Before I move along, I wanna get my loaf pan situated,

so, you have choices here.

Are you gonna have a nine by five

or a one pound eight by four?

This is actually a bit bigger and this is,

I feel like this is gonna work,

so I'm gonna use this today

'cause I want my loaf pan to be puffier and higher.

The big pan will make it a little bit lower and wider.

Butter and flour.

And you don't need a ton of butter on this.

To make getting things out a little bit easier,

I'm gonna add a paper sling.

It just goes along the long sides

and this way you could pull it out easily at the end.

Could you use baking spray for this?

Yes, you definitely could.

But when you have a light-colored cake like this

with a long bake time,

the cake spray will definitely darken up the side

and I just don't like the way that looks,

so I always stick with buttering and flowering

unless it's like a chocolate cake.

All right, let's kick around a little flour

just for the sides that don't have paper.

Wonderful.

All right, this is all ready to go.

Now, let's get our butter together.

To my mixing bowl,

I'm adding one cup or 226 grams

of unsalted room temperature butter.

This step is important

because here we're gonna beat the butter and sugar up

until they're light and fluffy.

And if the butter is too cold,

it'll be like little nodules of butter hanging around.

If it's too soft, it won't aerate,

so, you need to be room temperature.

You could press in with your finger

and it'll yield to the touch,

the butter will bend, not break, and that's basically it.

If it's a cold day like it is here

and your butters been on the countertop for hours,

it'll still be ice cold.

Microwave it at ten second increments

at half power until it's softened.

Pop your butter in, add your whisk attachment,

and we're gonna cream it up just for like 10 seconds

and give it a head start before we add the sugar in.

Doing this is just an insurance policy

to make sure that nothing is gonna be like

a hidden surprise in the butter.

To sweeten things up and soften the cake,

I want one cup or 200 grams of sugar.

And I'm just gonna measure this out with a measuring cup.

Sugar is actually counted as a liquid in recipes,

so, this is fine.

Unlike flour, you can't pack granulated sugar in,

so, what you see is what you get.

With flour, it's totally different,

and brown sugar is different as well.

Set this to medium and add the sugar in.

(upbeat music)

Let your mixer work for a few minutes

just to incorporate the butter and sugar

and get them to be light and fluffy.

We're pumping air in and making it really creamy.

(upbeat music)

And it's always a good idea

to scrape the bowl down several times

because the top is getting fluffy and amazing

and the bottom is getting compacted

and probably doesn't even have that much sugar on it.

It's pure butter.

If you're making this recipe with a hand mixer,

you're gonna scrape the bottom of your bowl with the beaters

and you can skip this step.

While the butter's mixing,

I'm gonna crack four eggs into a mixing cup

just so I can make sure they're cracked

and there's no fragments of shells hanging out.

That is not the texture we want for this cake.

I'm gonna mix it up for, like, 30 seconds more

and then start adding the eggs in.

(mixer whirring)

Just to show you the texture before we move on.

Right now, ooh, it is a cloud of butter and sugar

and it really changed color.

It went from being a pale yellow to an off-white

and it got a lot of air pumped into it,

so the volume's increased as well.

Back to mixing on medium,

I'm adding the eggs in one at a time,

and yes, you should scrape down again

because the top will be very eggy and liquidy

and the bottom will be pure butter and sugar.

It's just the way it is.

(mixer whirring)

Pound cake, by the way,

is like the original snacking cake and it is so versatile.

You could have it with whipped cream and berries.

It could be the base for a baked Alaska.

It's just good by the slice as a snack.

And the nice thing is it lasts for a long time,

so, you can make it and enjoy it

over the course of a few days

and it'll still be delicious on the last day.

If you have some interesting poundcake uses,

let me know in the comments.

Someone just told me they toast it

and add cream cheese on top.

That sounds delicious.

Last egg.

(mixer whirring)

One more scrape down.

And right now the mixture looks crazy.

It looks like cottage cheese.

Lots of little butter pieces suspended in egg.

That's fine though.

And that's just how it is.

The mixture breaks

because we added so much water from the eggs.

But the flour will bring it right back on together.

This is a modern edition as well,

but half a cup of sour cream gives you a wonderful tang.

And, once again, I say this all the time,

but sour cream is weakly acidic

and that weak acid will inhibit gluten from connecting

and give you a more tender, just beautiful crumb.

It also gives the cake some substance

because this is not a light, fluffy cake,

it's a denser cake in the best way.

It's really substantial and each bite is like, I feel it.

It's like the butter and the sugar

and it's like, mmm, that's good.

Totally different from, like, an angel food cake

or, like, a grocery store vanilla cake

where it's like a cloud.

For some flavor, I'm adding two tablespoons of vanilla.

(mixer whirring)

This is as mixed as it's gonna get.

It's time to add our flour mixture.

And before I do that, I just wanna tell you,

the mixer is gonna do a little bit of work to get it started

and I will finish it with my spatula

because aside from adding too much flour in,

one thing that can go wrong is over-mixing your cake.

Add the flour in.

Mix for just a few seconds on low.

(mixer whirring)

That's good.

Our mixer is done, so put it away.

Use your spatula and just finish bringing it together.

Really focus on getting all that junk at the bottom

up to the top because that'll be least mixed.

And then any remaining streaks of flour should go away.

Time to transfer our batter into our prepared pan.

And if you're used to, like, a normal cake batter,

this will look a little bit more broken than other cakes.

And that's just how it is

because of the amount of eggs and butter we have.

Give your loaf a little bit of a shimmy

and just smooth the top out.

If you want a dramatic crack at the top,

you could add a little bar of butter right on top

and that'll give you that one crack.

I'm leaving it alone because it'll look good either way,

and this already has enough butter for me.

This is ready to go into the oven, 350 for about 40 minutes

or until a skewer comes out clean from the center.

This is a slightly smaller pan,

so I might need to add five or 10 minutes.

In you go.

Allow your cake to cool,

give it a slice, and it's ready to enjoy.

I did not need any butter on top. It looks beautiful.

Hmm.

There is something so satisfying

and just good about the simple flavors of a pound cake.

It's a pleasure to bite into and it melts in your mouth.

I hope you get a chance to make this recipe,

and if you like this video, check out my easy cake playlist.