ISO recipe from my childhood

[little_bopeep]

My grandma used to make the most wonderful buttermilk poundcake ever. She was from Louisiana (if that makes a difference--a regional recipe?), and this was in the 60's-70's. It was a very dense, heavy cake that she baked in a tube pan, and the batter was always very "chiffon-y". It had at least 6 whole eggs and a faint lemony flavor. When it baked, it came out with a slightly crunchy crust. MMMMM...

Anybody have a similar recipe? I found one on a site that alleged that it was a family recipe of Elvis', but it ran all over my oven when I tried to make it. (Tube pan malfunction.) I may try it again, who knows?

[Gilgamesh37]

I love this one, which I got from a co-worker. It's one of my favorite pound cakes; in fact, I can only make it when I know I'm going to take it somewhere else--if it's in the house, I'll eat the whole thing. No faint lemon taste, but you could always add a titch of lemon extract or lemon oil.

L’S BUTTERMILK POUNDCAKE

1 cup butter, room temperature
2 ¼ cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
½ tsp baking soda
3 cups flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a tube or bundt pan. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir the baking soda into the buttermilk. Add the flour to the batter, alternating with the buttermilk, and beat until smooth (2-3 additions each). Stir in the salt and vanilla and pour into the pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes. Cool in pan about 10 minutes, then turn out onto rack to cool completely.

[sneezles]

Found this one with 6 eggs!

Awesome Pound Cake
Willie Crawford

My Aunt Ruth used to make the best pound cake
in the whole world. It was so rich and creamy.
She explained to me that it was called a pound
cake because it used a pound of butter and a
pound of sugar. This was what made it so rich.
Here's my recipe - hers was very similar.

Ingredients:
3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir in
the sugar. I use a large spoon for this. Next I add
the butter. My grandmother would melt the butter
in a pan over slow heat to make it blend easier.
You can do this or just let the butter soften at
room temperature. Add the eggs, whole. At this
point I break out my mixer and begin mixing on
slow. I slowly add my buttermilk, and then the
vanilla extract. After it is thoroughly stirred,
I turn the mixer up to medium for a few minutes,
and then finally on high. If the mixture is a little
thick I add just a touch more buttermilk. If you don't
mix things thoroughly you will have lumps that will
form air bubbles in your mixture and leave holes
in your finished cake. It was always a matter of pride
not to have these air pocket holes in our cakes so we
always made sure we got all of the lumps. In the
pre-electric-mixer day that involved a lot of whipping
the cake by hand. We usually didn't have a hand cranked
mixer
that worked well, so this involved a large mixing spoon
to whip it. Some old timers even counted the number
of times they whipped the mixture - sort of made it
fun and you didn't notice your arm tiring.

Preheat the over to 325 degrees.

Take your standard tube cake pan and oil it with
butter. Then lightly flour the oiled pan. Shake
the excess flour from the pan.

Pour the mix in, bake the cake for about 1 hour
and twenty minutes. Keep looking at how your cake
is doing through the oven door but avoid opening
the door too much while it is cooking as I have
seen this, or jarring a cake, cause it to collapse.
When you think it is done, do the toothpick test.
Stick a wooden toothpick into one of the thickest
parts of the cake. If it's dry when you pull it our,
the cake is done.

Allow the cake to cool 15 or 20 minutes in the pan.
Then gently remove it, and stick it on your favorite
decorative cake plate.

[blazedog]

This creates a dense lemony cake. Don't make the glaze until ready to use -- that way it creates a somewhat crunchy glaze as the sugar doesn't dissolve

Lemon Buttermilk Cake

Source: Maida Heatter, 1979.

Ingredients

finely grated rind of 2 or 3 large lemons
2 T. lemon juice
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 sticks sweet butter
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs, large or extra-large
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 9x3 inch tube pan, line with paper, butter paper, dust with bread crumbs.

Mix the lemon rind and juice. Set aside. Sift flour, soda, and salt, and set aside. In a large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, alternately add dry ingredients in 3 additions and buttermilk in 2 additions, scraping bowl with spatula, beating only unti smooth. Remove from mixer, and stir in the lemon mixture. Turn into pan, rotate the pan briskly in opposite directions to level top. Bake 75 minutes until cake tester comes clean. Let cake stand in pan for 5 minutes, invert on rack, and remove paper. Put rack over foil to catch excess glaze. Brush glaze on all sides and top of cake.

Glaze:
Mix 1/3 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup granulated sugar.
Serves 12 generous portions.

[little_bopeep]

Thanks, everyone! In truth, the recipe from my memory sounds like an amalgamation of all 3 of those, except without the glaze. Guess I'll have to bake all of them to test 'em!

[Beth]

SUsan, I have a couple of Louisiana regional cookbooks, incluing a couple of Junior League ones. Several possibilities there -- This one comes from Lafayette and seems most like what you described.

Springtime Pound Cake

3 c sugar
1 c shortening
6 eggs, separated
2 tsp lemon extract
3 c sifter flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp soda
1 cup buttermilk

In large mixing bowl, blend sugar and shortening until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Aff flavoring. Sift dry ingredients together; add to first mixture alternately with buttermilk (begin and end with dry ingredients).

Beat egg whites; fold carefully into batter. Pour into 10 inch greased and floured tube pan. Bake at 350 for one hour and 10 minutes or until done. Serve with fresh or frozen berries and whipped cream. Or frost if desired. This cake will keep and is even better the second day.

[claire797]

Here's another one for you, Susan. I was looking through a very, very old Southern Living desserts cookbook this evening and it caught my eye. The eggs are separated and it contains sour cream. In my experience, both of those things have resulted in exceptionally light-tasting cakes.

This is the recipe, but with a few adaptations. The original used margarine. I think it would be way better with butter flavored Crisco. You'd get the lightness from the shortening along with the flavor of butter. An of course, you could use regular butter, but you might lose some of the lightness that the shortening or margarine imparted in the original. I also added the lemon peel.

[B]Sour Cream Pound Cake[B]

3 cups sifted cake flour
1/4 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
6 eggs, separated
2 sticks Butter Flavored Crisco
3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 (8 oz) carton sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 10 inch tube pan with Pam for baking or other flour added cooking spray.

Combine four and soda. Set aside

Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to egg whites and beat until stiff peaks form. Set aside

In a large bowl, beat shortening and sugar for about 3 minutes or until very light and creamy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add remaining ¼ teaspoon salt, vanilla and whichever lemon flavoring you choose.

Add the flour/soda mixture alternately with the sour cream, being careful not to over-beat. Fold in the egg whites and pour into prepared pan.

Bake for one hour.