Formula for delicious pound cake

[Gbemisola]

Looking for formula for a delicious creaming method and a melt in the mouth cake, please someone should help me out.

 

[Pinkaholic]

Hi, I'm in the UK and I think (but i may be wrong!) a pound cake is essentially just a standard sponge (eg Victoria sponge cake)...? If so, a really easy method is that for 4 large eggs you use 225g of each of the following: butter (or margarine), sugar (caster preferably), and self raising flour. Or, even easier, weigh the eggs in their shells and add the same amount of the other ingredients. You'll also need a tsp of vanilla, a bit of milk and possibly a sachet of baking powder. 4 eggs makes a 23cm cake for me.

I use an electric handheld whisk but I always follow the 'manual' method- add the sugar and butter and cream together for a few mins. It's much quicker if all ingredients are at room temp. Then add one egg at a time and whisk after each one. Add the vanilla then the flour- you might want to do this in a couple of batches otherwise you might end up with it everywhere if you're using anything electric to mix! Once everything is well blended, you'll now most likely need to add some milk to loosen up the batter. Add a little a time until you reach 'ribbon' consistency.

Bake in a preheated oven (prepare your cake tin, turn on oven and then start making the cake) at around 180°C, maybe a little lower if you have a v powerful fan oven. If you're making this batch to cook in 2 smaller sandwich tins then 160°C should be fine. Tbh this is probably the hardest part of any cake making- getting to know your oven!

Variations: you can add flavourings v easily. For any citrus, just grate some zest into the cake at the end and use some of the juice in place of milk. For chocolate, swap about one third of the flour for cocoa. This is when you might want to add some baking powder as you're taking away some of the raising agent of the flour. For a more decadent chocolate flavour, add some melted chocolate too and add some cocoa in the milk to make a chocolate milk! Spices, nuts, poppy seeds, raisins etc can all just be added without the need to change anything in the basic ingredients. You can also use oils (such as almond) for flavour without needing to change anything and the milk can be substituted for any liquid such as juice or coffee for additional flavour.

I hope this is what you were after and that it's been helpful!

 

[Pinkaholic]

Forgot to say, once you've put the batter in the cake tin, drop it from a bit of a height a couple of times on to worktop to break any air bubbles.