This cake will make you happy. Period. Rich, subtly flavored whipping cream pound cake has a meltingly tender crumb that literally does melt in your mouth.The perfect pound cake to enjoy on its own, as a base for a trifle, or with ice cream and/or sauce on top.
13oz. cake flourabout 3 cups, sifted, spooned, and swept
1teaspoonbaking powder
12oz. cool butterabout 68 degreesF
1 ¼teaspoonsfine sea salt
12oz. sugarabout 2 cups
8oz. soft brown sugarabout 1 cup, packed
2teaspoonsbest quality vanilla extract
¼teaspoonlemon extract
¼teaspoonalmond extract
5eggsbeaten
6oz. half and half3/4 cup
4ozheavy cream, very softly whipped (1/2 cup before whipping)
For the Glaze
2cups10x sugarconfectioners sugar or icing sugar
pinchof salt
¼teaspoon
a couple drops of lemon extract
a couple drops of almond extract
heavy creamanywhere from 6-8 tablespoons, depending on how thick you like your glaze
Sprinkles of your choiceoptional
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F.
Whisk together the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream butter along with the salt until smooth. Add the sugars and beat them together on medium until light and fluffy. Scrape bowl often. This will take about 7-8 minutes or so.
Add the extract and beat until all is well combined.
Drizzle in the eggs, a tiny bit at a time, scraping between additions and beating until completely incorporated. This will take about 5-7 minutes.
Add the dry ingredients and half and half alternately on low speed: dry-wet-dry-wet-dry.
Whisk cold cream until the whisk leaves tracks and the cream begins to thicken.
Gently but thoroughly fold the cream into the batter.
Put in a well-greased and floured 12 cup Bundt pan or tube pan and bake at 350F until deeply golden brown on top and firm to the touch. In my oven, this takes 1 hour and 5 minutes. Start checking at about 50 minutes and loosely tent with aluminum foil if it looks like the top is getting too brown.
Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack for 20 minutes or so. Make sure the sides are loosened, and then Turn Out onto a rack to cool completely.
Glaze is optional but lovely. Ditto, sprinkles.
Video
Notes
Nutritional information does not include the glaze.You can wrap this cake while still warm to keep moisture from evaporating out while it cools, but this cake is so tender and moist already, I usually skip this with this particular pound cake.Well-wrapped, this cake will keep in the freezer for two months. Thaw, still wrapped, in the fridge overnight and then on the counter until room temperature. Unwrap and glaze.You can wrap and freeze it with the glaze on it, but frozen glaze tends to get weepy once it thaws out. If you plan on freezing the whole cake, I suggest freezing it without glaze and then glazing it after the cake comes to room temperature.