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Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs

Home » Cakes » Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs I'm a sucker for a good heirloom recipe. In fact, I'd venture to say that if I were a Hilton or a Rockefeller or somesuch, I would be apt to say something like, "Forget the jewels and the inheritance, Grandmummy, what I really would like is the family chef's recipe box!". I should note that I go to these extremes in my mind because a) I've always kind of wanted to be a socialite and b) because my own family doesn't really have a whole lot of heirloom recipes to speak of. But that didn't stop me from trying to pry a few out of my Gramma the last time we got to visit with each other out in Denver this past August--she's always been quite the baker when she gets around to it. You've really never had a better sugar cookie in your life. I am very serious about this claim. Anyway, I'd only been back in San Francisco for a day or two before a cheery card from Gram showed up in my mailbox, stuffed thick with handwritten recipe cards for some of her favorite desserts (doesn't she have the loveliest handwriting you've EVER seen?). I was unnaturally excited by all of this--it was the stuff that schmaltzy food blog entries are made of. But I'll spare you all of that and just say that within the hour of opening that envelope, I was cranking up the oven and baking up my great aunt Phyllis's Crusty Butter Pound Cake. Aunt Phyllis was my Grampa's sister, from the Foropoulos side (Greek, much?) of the family. Most of this branch of the family live in and around Memphis, Tennesee, so I've never really known any of them very well, just from stories that my mom and aunts would tell or a few fuzzy memories from when they'd come up to visit us Yankees in Chicago when I was really little. I do know I have a second cousin down there who is about my age and who has always had a freaky resemblance to me. And now I also know that I really should have been going down there to visit more often if these people are turning out baked goods as fantastic as this pound cake. 

This particular recipe, as you may have guessed from the name, is of the buttery, crusty variety. It's basically the most awesome kind of pound cake, because the buttery flavor and crunch of the crust make it interesting and delicious enough to stand on its own, but it's not so absurdly moist and dense that its overkill to add some fruit, chocolate sauce, a syrupy coulis or ice cream (or hey, maybe all of those things--I won't tell if you won't). The light and fluffy batter, with its fabulous use of cake flour instead of all-purpose and a good dose of sour cream, gives you a clue as to how tender this cake is, but don't let it trick you into thinking that it's at all precious--this is a sturdy, no-nonsense cake. Bake sale material of the highest order, I'm telling you. It also is the perfect blank canvas on which to put your own twist--cinnamon sugar, citrus zest, a scrape of a vanilla bean, chocolate chips, berries of all sorts--very little would ruin this workhorse of a cake. Double the recipe, freeze one cake to "have one on hand" and feel like a champion of domestication--you'll be searching for ways to use it up before you know it.

Aunt Phyllis's Crusty Butter Pound Cake

Makes 1 large Bundt cake, or 2 9x5x3 inch loaves Label: Cakes



