Today is National Pound Cake Day! I love pound cake, don’t you? When I am nauseated, pound cake is the best internal settler I have found. Do you have a favorite kind of pound cake like me? My Nana’s (of course) was the very best – but a cold piece of Sara Lee will do just fine! I have a special trick that most people don’t know about – at least I don’t think they know about. I was snooping around in my Nana’s recipe book and I found her pound cake recipe – yay! I added a special ingredient to it to make it mine.
What is that special ingredient? Ah, yes – it is lemon curd from my friend Stacy’s blog Food Lust People Love. She calls it Quick Lemon Curd and she is not kidding because it was finished in no time at all!
It is Meyer lemon season – and I love Meyer lemons! I was able to purchase 12 lemons but it cost me $8 and that is a pretty steep price, don’t you think? I was determined to get every single angstrom of use out of those little yellow spheres of joy and with Mr. Picky Eater’s help, I did! Over the next few months, you will see several lemon recipes including this one from my Nana and Stacy with another from my Aunt Irene. I hope you love them all! Let’s get on with the recipe.
Ingredients:
½ Cup Shortening – like Crisco
1 Cup Butter, softened
3 Cups Sugar
6 large Eggs or 7 medium ones
3 Cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon Baking Powder
1/8 teaspoon Salt
1 Cup of Milk
2 Teaspoons Vanilla
1 Vanilla Bean, scraped – I added this, it was not in original recipe
Directions:
Pre-heat the oven to 325F
Get your 12-cup Bundt pan or two 6-cup Bundt pans OR three 8.5×4.5 Loaf Pans.
Grease with extra shortening and sprinkle flour, shaking out the extra.
Put ½ cup shortening and butter into mixer and cream.
Add sugar mixing until light yellow and fluffy.
Then add eggs one at a time mixing until the yolk disappears.
Set the pans into the oven to begin heating up (this was Nana’s secret to a crisp outside and tender inside).
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.
Add a little at a time to the mixer alternating with the milk with mixer on LOW and only mixing until mostly incorporated between each addition.
Last, stir the vanilla by hand.
Pour into the pan(s) until 2/3 full or,
Fill ½ way full, put the lemon curd from Food Lust People Love around the middle in a ring then put in the rest of the batter carefully covering the curd.
Place in the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Take the cans out and cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes then invert and allow to cool completely.
Store in an air-tight container in the fridge.
Whether you add the lemon curd or not – this is one great cake! Nana seldom put a glaze on her pound cake but when she did, she combined fresh squeezed lemon juice, powdered sugar and milk. She did not use a recipe so I don’t have one. It’s great without any glaze anyway. See how crispy that cake is? That’s why we heated the pan for about 5 minutes before putting in the batter.
For those of you wondering, I am not Jewish and none of my family is either. I found the pan, brand new at a yard sale for $1 and I loved the way the star would dictate how to cut it and it was really pretty – so I bought it. I also have a football stadium bundt pan and I’m not a football player either – I just have eclectic taste!
****Check out the little green button just below that makes a print-friendly recipe. If you click a box at the top (when the recipe comes up) you can take out the pictures and get it all on one page. I had so many requests for a print button, I got Top Girl to do it one night…….it took her less than 10 minutes. Why did I wait so long?*****
