Dessert -- Granny's Pound Cake
Submitted by dvdlee on August 27, 2004 at 10:50 am

DESCRIPTION
Dessert -- Granny's Pound Cake

SUMMARY
Yield 0 File under cakes

INSTRUCTIONS
This is a very old recipe passed down from my grandmother (and maybe older for all I know!). It a very simple, plain, but easy traditional pound cake.

3 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter (1 stick/1/4 of a lb.)
5 whole eggs
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 1 Tablespoon of boiling water
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups flour (I use a soft Southern AP flour, such as Pioneer or Martha White)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature (72F). The butter can still have a slight chill, but it should almost be at 72F. Preheat oven to 300F. Butter and lightly flour a 10" tube pan.

Cream butter and shortning together VERY WELL until light & fluffy. While continuing to beat, slowly add the sugar until you have a fluffy butter/shortning/sugar mixture.

Sift flour, then combine salt & flour, blend well until completely mixed.

Beat eggs into the creamed butter & sugar until combined. (Add one egg at a time and mix, when the egg is almost completely incorporated, add the next egg.)

Add flour/salt mixture to the batter, alternating with the buttermilk. (Flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, etc.) Fold in the vanilla after the flour & buttermilk have been completely added.

Prepare the baking soda/boiling water mixture (making sure there are no lumps) and add to the batter all at once and then quickly stirring by hand into the batter.

Pour batter into the tube pan. Drop the pan with the batter in it on the counter a couple of times (to help remove air bubbles), then take a regular dinnerware knife and run it around the batter in a circular fashion for 1 or 2 revolutions (don't ask me why -- its just something that was always done at this point -- I think the idea is to make sure there are no bubbles in the batter).

Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Test cake to make sure it is completely baked. Remove from oven and let rest in the pan around 10 minutes or so, then invert and remove from pan (I always take a long thin knife to cut off the "tube" part of the pan from the cake). Let cool before serving.

You can bake this in a bundt pan - but the pan must be buttered very heavily so it will come out without leaving any pieces behind. Of course, if you are making trifle or something using slices or pieces of pound cake this is not a problem!