A new Challenger has Appeared!

And he has stolen the blag!

(It was my birthday yesterday and the mansome McK made me a cake!)

Hello, this is McK, and I made TWC a pound cake for her birfday and she suggested I do a guest blag. So here I am!

Pound cakes are interesting. They are called pound cakes not because they weigh a pound but because they take a pound of each main ingredient. I shall list the ingredients now so you get the idea.


3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
5 eggs (yokes included)

That there is three pounds. Now the rest of the of the ingredients.

2 sticks (1 cup) softened (room temp) butter.
1/3rd cup shortening (fat).
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder (NOT BAKING SODA, DO NOT MISTAKE[won't be horrible explosion or anything, it just won't turn out as good and doesn't hold moisture as well])
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I just eyeball it, but unless you've made this cake four or five times I'd suggest measuring it for the first go as baking isn't like cooking where you can eyeball everything)
1/2 cup milk.

I should mention that I took a lot of pictures making this cake. I felt pressured as I'd never done this type of thing before and I wanted to do it well. Also the pictures aren't very good 'cause I took them with my iPhone which isn't forgiving of a shaking hand. But before I launch into my story I will give you a little back story:

My kitchen is laughably small. The thought of making a pound cake in there was not a fun one, especially since I've done it before and it is indeed not a fun experience. So with brilliance I grabbed my laundry, headed over to my mom's and begged the use of her kitchen (and washing machine). Her only fee was that I bake TWO cakes, one for m'dad and m'bro (she's dieting).


So, now enjoying a much larger and better furnished kitchen, I grabbed the old recipe book that is probably older than me. It's so aged and beat up that if it was a leather bound book it'd look like the Necronomicon, except for holding the spells to the zombie apocalypse it would hold the spells for never-ending deliciousness. This is the same cookbook that holds the secret of the Buttermilk Brownies.

I had a hard time reading it because I have a hard time reading all handwriting but thankfully (and irritatingly) Mom was there to coach me along and several times I had to shoo her away and say "My cake! No--Nono, no, no more help! Go watch Gene Simmons!"


I had a slight "Oh crap" moment when I thought I didn't have enough eggs to make two cakes, but I found some nestled away in the east wing of my mom's refrigerator (it's deceptively large). That is water on my hand, by the way, not slime or some other best left unmentioned fluid.



And now onto the actual cake makingness!


Get your two sticks of room temp butter and dump them into your mixer (I was lucky enough to use my mom's mixer but if you don't happen to have a super chef for a mom one of the hand mixers should do well--it's how I did it in my pitikitchen) with your shortening. You can start mixing it then or wait until you dump in the sugar, it doesn't really matter. (As you can see by the giant glass measuring cup, my mom has the COOLEST stuff to cook with)

You do this for 3-5 minutes until everything is nice and creamy. That's what we're doing at this point, I forgot to mention: Creaming the butter. Or the eggs. We're creaming something. Don't look at me.

Anyway, when it looks like this (left) it's time to add the eggs! One at a time and don't add the next until the last one is nice and mixed in there. Keep the beater at a slow pace whenever adding something to the mix. You do this because if it's at high speed it creates a geyser of liquid/flour/sugar/blood(should your finger get caught in there) and it makes a mess.

Now while the butter is creaming, if you want to multitask (I did on the second cake and the prep goes waaaaay faster) drop your flour, salt and baking powder in a sifter and sift it into a bowl. Then scowl at it. Trust me, the anxiety it feels from the scowl will make it taste that much better. (You cannot tell from the picture, but I am scowling the shit out of that flour).


At this point you should have your eggs and sugar and butter and shortening and vanilla all creamed together into a nice almost-batter. Now you take your half-cup of milk and while the mixer is mixing you pour in the milk a little bit at a time. A leeetle beet heeer, a leeeeeetle beet theere.



After that's well and mixed in there grab your flour mix and add that in there too! I'd advise a slow and steady approach with the mixer running low, otherwise you get flour in your eyes and it blows. Like a Thai hooker. In your eyes. Don't look at me.

And after THAT'S all mixed in you grab your bunt pan! I only know how to make it in a bunt pan and I dunno how different pans will affect the cooking process, so if you want another pan you can go right ahead and experiment. Let me mention, however, that this batter does not rise very much. In the bunt pan it rises maybe an inch to an inch and a half, if that.


Spray your pan with some non-stick spray (momma uses Baker's Choice), then grab your batter and glop it in there reasonably level (mine looked like a mountain range, the batter is thick).

Oh, I prolly shoulda mentioned this before, but preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Stick that bad boy in there for an hour.













Stick a toothpick in it to see if it's done. If it comes out clean, it is done. If part of the cake collapses or the stick comes out with stuff on it, not done.


Mmmmm. Doneness.








And here's the final product! Remember, I made two cakes, and this is the one my family has probably already destroyed. I would never offer the first slice of a birfday cake to any but the birfday person (in this case, birfday girl).

TWC devoured her piece like she had Ebola and the cake was the cure.

Took me about 3 hours to make two cakes but the second one about 30 minutes once I knew what I was doing.

-McK