Elegant Sour Cream Pound Cake
This recipe is credited to Southern Living - a magazine that I always found a little more pretentious than Good Housekeeping, as if it were trying to be more like Texas Monthly. I have a vague memory of some excitement during the '80's when my dad, for some reason, was going to appear in one of the two magazines (SL or TM) - not like an interview, just like he was walking through a museum and they took his picture, or something - I don't remember the specifics.
A tube pan is also called an angel food pan. A bundt cake pan would also work - either one has the "tube" in the middle. It just depends if you want the scalloped or straight edges. That reminds me of my daughter who used to leave the back edge of her hamburger uneaten because she didn't like the crust - never mind that she had to eat through all the other crust on the front and sides of the burger to get to the back edge...LOL. This pan I actually claimed from my mother-in-law's house when we were cleaning out her kitchen.
As I always say, if it's got shortening in the recipe, you know it's an older recipe and it's gonna taste good. I measured the Crisco while my butter was softening in the oven that was still a little warm from brunch.
Still waiting for the butter, I measured out the sugar - THREE cups!!! I put it in my small mixing bowl for holding and planned to use the small bowl, after adding the sugar into the recipe, to hold and whip the egg whites.
The butter was probably in the oven close to an hour. It was super soft but not dripping.
I use Swans Down when a recipe calls specifically for cake flour because it is the most widely available. "Sifted cake flour" indicates the total measurement is AFTER the sifting as opposed to "Cake flour, sifted" which would mean measure THEN sift. Of course, each time I follow such an instruction in a recipe I contemplate whether the author is trust worthy to adhere to this subtlety. The downfall to this instruction, in my kitchen, is that I sift into the Tupperware Mix 'n Pour and it's difficult to get a precise measurement because you can't level off the top but instead just have to shake it around and eyeball it. I suppose I could sift a bunch and then measure out of the mix 'n pour into some other container but sifted ingredients should be handled as minimally as possible to prevent them packing down so it's sort of a no-win situation. Ideally the recipe would be written with weights instead.
The recipe didn't say too but I also sifted the baking soda, baking powder and salt because that is pretty standard. They usually pass through the sifter very easily anyway - sometimes the baking powder has a clump.
I was intrigued that the recipe specifically called it "commercial" sour cream. According to an internet search commercial sour cream is at least 18% fat or 14% milk fat. I don't believe our nutrition labels have data that specifically matches up to that. The % on our labels show of daily recommended allowance. I assume that 18% is high so I just looked for the sour cream with the highest fat content which wound up being store brands over national brands. I used up the rest of my Great Value (Walmart) container and then filled the rest in with Market Pantry (Target).
Creamed butter and shortening.
After half the sugar was added.
After all the sugar was added. It was already pretty heavy and you could hear the sugar crystals moving around. I probably should have used my automatic mixer because this batter got very dense.
After three eggs had already been mixed in. The fourth egg is in the bowl - I watched the deep yellow color move through the dough until I couldn't see it anymore because it was blended in and then I added the next yolk.
I had approximately 3 cups of dry ingredients so I added it about a cup at a time.
I added the sour cream in halves. So, since the recipe stated alternate and start and end with dry it was 1/3 of dry mix, 1/2 of sour cream, 1/3 of dry mix, 1/2 of sour cream, 1/3 of dry mix.
A very dense batter.
When beating egg whites you should always have clean and dry utensils for best results. So I rinsed the beaters very well and dried them off.
Beating took several minutes on high power.
You can see the peaks in the bowl and on the beaters.
Whenever a recipe says to "fold" I prefer to use a rubber spatula instead of an electric mixer. Some mixers have "fold" speeds but I believe the truest was is by hand.
I've learned that using room temperature egg whites creates a more cohesive whip. If they are cold, when you dump out the whipped whites you will have some runny liquid in the bottom of the bowl. My eggs were not quite to full room temperature so I had a tiny bit of liquid in the bottom of my bowl.
When pouring into a tube pan I prefer to hold the bowl still and spin the pan instead of trying to move the bowl around for an even distribution.
I expected this cake to be dense so I pounded the pan on the counter a few times to get any air bubbles out.
I used a metal pick instead of wooden. It came out clean after 90 minutes. The cake smelt a little strong - I was starting to worry that it was burning before I opened the oven.
I set it on the cooktop and cooled for 10 minutes - more like 15.
I ran a spatula around both the outer and inner edges, going all the way down to the bottom.
The cake came out very easily!
There were sort of crusty spots and they wanted to flake off a bit. The sensitive kid came in and asked why the kitchen smelled like syrup - must've been all the sugar in the cake!
I served with strawberries and cool whip like a strawberry shortcake.
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