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ArcaMax Publishing > Home & Garden > Recipes > Recipes by Zola

Old-Fashioned Pound Cake

My Grandmother's Genes...

When I was a kid, every summer we'd pack everyone into our big Cadillac and drive down to Grandma's for vacation. Grandma lived in Waukegan, Illinois. That was a 4 hour drive from our home in Appleton, Wisconsin. There were six kids in the car. 4 sat on the bench seat and my brother and I were small enough, so we'd lay on the floor with our heads on the "hump" in the middle. I remember being given treats that kept us quiet. Four hours is a long time when you are a little kid.

Grandma's house wasn't all that exciting but we had cousins in the neighborhood too, so we seemed to have plenty of activity. Grandma's house smelled funny. I guess now, it was moth balls. Grandma ate funny food. We never saw whole wheat bread unless we were at Grandma's. She toasted it and ate it with butter and jam. And Grandma drank tea. Yuk. Tea. We only knew adults that drank coffee and we kids drank milk; lots of milk.

Outside I remember a long flower garden growing along between the driveway and the side of the house. Grandma had flowers of every kind in that garden. I guess, now you'd call it a cottage-style garden. I can remember seeing a newspaper featuring a picture of my grandmother standing next to her garden. I'm pretty sure they took that picture of my grandma when she turned 90 years old. The article accompanying the picture talked about how my grandma still lived on her own, tended her garden and was in great health. She had been a widow for decades.

Grandma wore funny clothes. She always had a dress on. It was a shirtwaist style and was always quite long. It would skim her ankles. I'd see her tug at her bra straps once in awhile. I thought that was funny too. And she wore sensible shoes; black leather lace-ups with a bit of a heel, and stockings. She wore her silver hair up in a bun and she had those old-lady wire-rimmed glasses. She always looked ready for company, or like it was Sunday and she was ready to go to Church.

Grandma never did anything in a hurry. I remember her quietly moving around her kitchen and the living room. I don't recall any other rooms in the house. I don't remember ever being upstairs but I'm sure I was. Grandma would hug and kiss us like any grandma. She had those soft, fuzzy, wrinkly cheeks and the not-quite bright-white teeth that can sometimes startle children. I never heard my grandma raise her voice; even when there were all these kids running around. Instinctively, we knew to stay away from that garden though. I doubt grandma would have yelled, even if we broke the stems on her huge zinnias with a stray kicked ball, but we made sure that never happened.

Grandma died about 2 weeks before her 100th birthday. I hope I have my grandma's genes.

Old-Fashioned Pound Cake

When you have a hankering for comfort food this will hit the spot. I was walking through the grocery awhile ago and spotted pound cake on sale. It immediately reminded me of my grandmother, but I didn't want to just buy the cake and eat it. I wanted the experience of baking my own, so I studied some recipes for old-fashioned pound cake and fashioned this one for myself. I hope you enjoy it and that it brings back some good memories for you too.

This is one rich cake. They don't call it "pound cake" for nothing.

1 cup of butter
6 eggs
3 cups of white sugar
3 cups of white flour
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
2 Tbl of vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two loaf pans (9X3" each). With an electric mixer, cream butter, sugar and eggs until fluffy. Add the flour one half cup at a time along with a little cream and keep on mixing until you have incorporated all of the flour. Now add the vanilla. Mix. Pour into your prepared loaf pans. Bake for 50 minutes or until the cakes have risen, have a golden crust and when you check each with a toothpick, the pick comes out clean. If you have moist batter stuck to the toothpick you need to bake it a bit longer. Add 5 minutes and check again.

Let the cake cool standing upright in the pan for 15 minutes. Then turn the pan on its side and gently tip it to coax the cake out. Then stand the cake back upright and let it cool completely.

You can serve this so many ways. A few ideas:

Slice and drizzle on chocolate sauce. Add whipped cream if you want.

Serve with sliced fruit that has been warmed with a bit of sugar. Heat until sugar dissolves. Strawberries and blueberries are big favorites.

And if you want to go over the top, you fry the slices in a bit of butter and serve warm with ice cream.

Or use your imagination and go wild. You can even eat it plain and if you are at your grandma's she might let you eat it for breakfast.

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola

Send email to Zola at zolacooks@gmail.com.



This news arrived on: 09/15/2008

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