A loaf of basic pound cake with vanilla flavor, brushed with some lemon syrup. Great cake recipe to start 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.
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Why 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 a softer loaf of cake, try my cranberry apricot loaf cake, though it uses slightly more ingredients)
Pound Cake Success Tips
You will have to make sure that you take some time, probably just a few minutes, to beat the butter and sugar well. The butter-sugar mixture should look light and fluffy.
While adding the eggs, add them in 4 batches, letting the butter-sugar mixture “absorb” the eggs well before adding the next batch.
To prevent overmixing, simply fold in the flour with a rubber spatula till just combined – that means you don’t see any visible streaks of flour, and that’s done!
>> MORE CAKE RECIPES:
How Long Should I Bake It For?
If you are using the loaf pan with same dimension 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.
If you are using a smaller but deeper, or bigger loaf pan, 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 🙂
>> MORE BAKING BASICS TOPICS:
Make It Moist
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 by brushing on some lemon syrup. Remember to do it while the cake is still hot so that it absorbs the syrup well.
Classic Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 90 g butter, softened
- 75 g 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
- 10 g hot water
- 10 g sugar
- 10 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. Cool till warm before removing from pan to cool further.
- You can wrap the pound cake in clingwrap while the cake is slightly warm to lock in the moisture.
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