Pound Cake

I think of pound cake as the LBD of the dessert world. Everyone should have a recipe for pound cake. You can keep it simple or dress it up many ways.  Yesterday I made a blueberry and time sauce for the cake.  It was delightful.  My daughter, who hates fruit, always dresses her's up with chocolate sauce and whip cream if I've made some recently.  My husband almost always has his plain.   Sometimes I like to cut it super thin and make a "short cake" out of it with whatever fruit is in season.  If it is the middle of winter I'll take out my peaches I canned in the summer.  As I said there are so many ways you can dress up this simple, delicious and easy to make dessert.  

My recipe comes from Michael Ruhlman's Ratio. I've adapted it slightly in terms of the extracts used to our tastes.  We love coconut!

This makes one cake.  All of the measurements are in ounces. I highly suggest you buy a scale if you don't already have one.  They come in quite handy.  

8 oz softened butter

8 ounces sugar

1 tsp salt 

8 ounces of eggs

1/2 tsp coconut extract

1 tsp vanilla

8 ounces flour

Preheat oven to 325 and butter a 9" loaf pan.  

Beat butter ( a standing mixer works great) for 1 minute and then add the sugar and salt.  Continue for about 2-3 minutes until the mixture becomes a light yellow.  Add the eggs one at a time and continue to beat.  Add the extracts at this point.  Add the flour and blend until the ingredients are just incorporated.  Pour  the batter into the pan and bake about 1 hour.  Allow the cake to rest about 5-10 minutes before turning it out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.