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A loaf of basic pound cake with vanilla flavor, brushed with some lemon syrup.
Great cake recipe to practice creaming method for baking beginners!
Are you a beginner in baking, looking to try out recipes to hone your baking skills?
I find the best way to pick up baking skills is to try the basic recipes to gather some confidence!
Often, we can find recipes with slightly complex steps, or with a lot of different ingredients (which you may not have in your pantry if you don’t bake all the time). I will be adding on to my Baking Basics series with a few basic recipes that uses simple ingredients and are quick to make.
若想阅读中文版本，请在网页的右边 “Google Translate” 点击选择 中文简体 (Chinese Simplified）或 繁体 (Chinese Traditional) 翻译。可能食谱读起来会怪怪的，所以如果有疑问都可以问哦！
What Makes A Pound Cake?
Do you love the good, old familiar taste of pound cakes?
Pound cakes are relatively easy to start baking with. Traditional pound cakes uses a 1:1:1 ratio for its flour, sugar and butter. This usually yields a rich, buttery loaf of cake which has denser crumbs.
In this recipe, I added a little baking powder to give it some lift. It is also okay to skip the baking powder if you do not have it.
(P.S.: If you prefer softer and fluffier cakes, try my cranberry apricot loaf cake / lemon cranberries yogurt loaf cake)
Pound Cake Success Tip #1: Softened Butter
It is important to use softened butter at room temperature.
That being said, also do not let the butter get too soft in our hot weather! For our sunny weather in Singapore, it probably takes about 10 mins or so to soften the butter.
How would you know if the butter has softened properly? Use the finger test!
Press lightly into the butter, which should still feel slightly cool to touch, and your finger would leave a light indentation on the butter. You should also feel that the butter is still a little firm, with some “resistance” against your finger. If the butter gives way easily, then it might be too soft.
You can pop it back to the fridge for a bit to firm up a little.
Pound Cake Success Tip #2: Beating & Mixing
You need to make sure that you take some time to cream the butter and sugar well, till light and fluffy (PS: do not overbeat). The butter-sugar mixture should look lighter in color and fluffy. This creaming process incorporates air into the batter and can give the cake some lift during the baking process.
And as we add the eggs, add them in 3 to 4 batches, letting the butter-sugar mixture “absorb” the eggs well before adding the next batch. This prevents curdling of the mixture (curdling can affect the texture of the cake after baking).
To prevent over-mixing, simply fold in the flour with a rubber spatula till just combined – that means you don’t see any visible streaks or lumps of flour, and that’s done!
>> MORE CAKE RECIPES:
Pound Cake Success Tip #3: Just Nicely Baked
If you are using the loaf pan with same size as mine, the baking time should be the same. It would also depends on your oven temperature – so it is always helpful to have an oven thermometer in the oven to keep tabs on the temperature, as home use ovens tend to have some fluctuations throughout the bake time.
Especially for home ovens, after using them for a few years, you will find that the internal temperature may have 10 or 20 degrees difference from the one you set on the dial.
If you are using a smaller but deeper, or bigger loaf pan, if cake is not fully baked, simply add on the bake time with 3 mins increments till there are no wet crumbs clinging onto the cake tester or skewer.
Small amount of dry crumbs would be just fine to ensure a moist bake 🙂
P.S.: Read this Top 7 Basic Baking Tips for more info.
>> MORE BAKING BASICS TOPICS:
Why Do We Brush Syrup?
Pound cakes made with the traditional ratio tend to be denser, and may be a little dry compared to many “improvised” pound cake recipes these days.
Modern pound cake recipes tend to include addition of milk / cream or other liquid to make the cake moister.
In this recipe, though it is made with traditional pound cake ratio, we can add on the moisture on the surface by lightly brushing on some lemon syrup. This step is totally optional. However if you are brushing the syrup, remember to do it while the cake is still hot so that it can absorb the syrup well.
Classic Pound Cake
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 28 minutes
- Total Time: 58 minutes
- Yield: 1 Loaf (16cm x 7cm) 1x
Ingredients
- 90 g unsalted butter, softened
- 75 g caster sugar
- 90 g eggs, beaten
- 90 g cake or top flour
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
Lemon Syrup
- 5 g hot water
- 5 g sugar
- 5 g lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and flour or line loaf pan.
- Place softened butter in a medium mixing bowl. Add in sugar and beat well with handheld mixer or whisk, till light and fluffy.
- Add in beaten eggs in 4 batches, mixing well after each addition.
- Sift in flour, baking powder and salt. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the flour till no visible pockets or streaks of flour is left in the batter.
- Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
- Bake in preheated oven at 160C for 20 mins. Increase temperature to 175C and bake for further 10 mins, or until a skewer into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- In the mean time, prepare the lemon syrup by adding sugar to the hot water and stir to dissolve well. Let cool before adding in lemon juice.
- Once cake is baked, let cool for a few mins on a cooling rack. While the cake is still hot, brush on lemon juice while cake is still in the loaf pan. You may not finish using all syrup. Cool till warm before removing from pan to cool further.
- You can wrap the pound cake in cling wrap while the cake is slightly warm to lock in the moisture.
- Category: Cakes, Dessert, Tea
- Method: Creaming
- Cuisine: American
This is so so so tempting and lovely.
Is it possible to double the recipe to bake it in a 9×5 inch loaf pan?
Please advise baking time and temperature.
Looking forward to your reply.
Jacqui
Thanks Jacqui! I think it should be able to bake well in a bigger loaf pan. I have not tried baking in a bigger loaf pan yet so I am not sure how it would turn out – but I would try to bake at 160C for 30 mins and then 170C (instead of 175C) for 10 mins.
Before the last 10 mins, I would check for browning. If not browned properly on top then I might increase temp to 175C for the last few mins. Insert skewer into cake to see if it is baked well – should not have wet batter or large clumps of crumbs 🙂
By the way this is a traditional pound cake recipe, so it can be a little dense in texture for some. If you like lighter texture for butter cakes, you can consider: https://cherienoms.com/2020/02/lemon-cranberries-yogurt-cake.html or https://cherienoms.com/2018/10/cranberries-apricot-loaf-cake.html