Pound Cake

This recipe is attributed to "Dena" who was my great aunt, my grandmother's sister.

She never had children of her own. Once when I was visiting my grandma my aunt invited me to spend the night at her house. Her and my uncle Scotty took me to a fabulous park, out for ice cream, and then we went back to their house for the evening. And then I got scared and they drove me back to my grandma's. I felt a little bad because they'd treated me so well. I don't know why I was scared - because I'd never been away from my mom or because their house was rather cluttered and maybe that freaked me out.

Years later I visited my grandma with my husband and daughter who was turning 2. On her birthday we went with my aunt to that same park (my uncle had already passed away). We have a video of the day. In the evening we went to the same ice cream place and my Grandma and "Uncle Ed" joined us.

When my grandma and aunt came to visit us in San Antonio they would always argue about which of them got to pay for things. I remember going to Eckerd's drug store with them and they were going to buy me one of those Bic pens that has four colors in one pen and you have to click down the lever to choose your color. It must've been near the end of the school year because I think I also got an autograph book. I remember them telling the cashier that the other one's money wasn't any good in Texas because they were from California.

I know - totally off topic but the point of this blog IS to record family history...

I gathered all my ingredients. Swans Down is "cake flour" which is supposed to be finer than all-purpose flour. I was going to preheat the oven but there was no temperature on the card so I googled and found the average temperature for pound cakes is 325 so that's what I used.

Sifting cake flour seems redundant but I did have quite a few lumps.

The margarine was at room temperature. As soon as it mushed up and was no longer in stick form it looked fluffy to me but when I was googling for the temperature I also read that it could take from 1 - 7 minutes to get fluffy and not to give up too early because getting the air in it is important.

I worked up to speed 3 on my 5-speed mixer and stayed there the whole time.

I went for 3 minutes. The internet also said not to overbeat and it was starting to look like we'd turned the corner on fluffy and were trending toward flat.