Classic Pound Cake

With just five simple ingredients, you can easily create this moist and delicious old-fashioned pound cake from a vintage recipe. Pound cake, so named because it originally called for one pound of each ingredient, is a perennial favorite, and one that has survived the years. Most modern recipes gild the lily with sour cream, milk or any number of other flavorings and additions. As good as those are (and who doesn't like variety?), this classic version is rather perfect.

Here's the mis en place for the recipe. Flour, butter, eggs and sugar. (Also, vanilla and a pinch of salt, which I forgot to photograph.)

Start by beating the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time.Add the flour, a pinch of salt and vanilla -- and that's it!

Spoon the batter into a greased bundt pan.

Smooth it with an offset spatula, a butter knife or the back of a spoon.

Bake for about 45 minutes. The top will look underbaked, but you can tell it's done by the way the cake is separating from the sides.

Let it cool in the pan for about ten minutes. Then run a knife around the edges to loosen it, turn it out on a rack, and tap the top until the cake releases.

The cake has a nice crumb.

Production notes: Have the butter at room temperature, and beat it well. Add the sugar and beat the mixture until it's light and fluffy before adding the eggs. I also added the vanilla to the butter-sugar-eggs mixture, instead of after the flour. The first time I made this (see below), I sprayed the pan with Pam and overbaked it, which resulted in a broken cake. This time, I greased the pan with Crisco -- not sure that made a difference.
It is essential not to overbake this cake. Don't go by the color, but do test with a skewer.
I also made an quick icing -- put some confectioner's sugar in a bowl, and add liquid (milk, cream, water or lemon juice)  and mix to the desired consistency.

Royal One-Egg One-Bowl Cake and Coffee Butter Frosting

There was a wonderful blog, Butter Me Up Brooklyn, the 2012 winner of  Saveur's best baking blog. Authored by the lovely Lillie Auld (we met when we did a food event together a few years back), the blog abruptly stopped in 2014.  (Lillie: where are you?) What I enjoyed best, aside from the imaginative recipes and writing, was its tag line: Baking Makes Friends. I've always subscribed to that theory, but could never express it as well as these three simple words do. 

Which brings me to this Royal One-Egg One-Bowl Cake. James, a porter at work, stopped by my office recently to tell me he had resigned, having purchased a house (for $10K!) in Youngstown, Ohio. James was always a big fan of my baked goods. So what better send off than to bake him a goodbye cake.

Trouble was, I had no time. Or so I thought, until I discovered this easy-as-pie vanilla cake recipe. And an equally easy frosting recipe.  It is a delicious old-fashioned one-layer cake; the recipe was probably originally from Royal Baking Powder, founded in the 1880s. 

Begin by sifting the flour, baking powder and salt. No one has a flour sifter these days, so just use a strainer, pushing the ingredients through with the back of a large spoon.

Add all the other ingredients except the egg into one bowl and beat for two minutes. Add the egg and beat for one minute.

Pour into a greased and floured nine-inch round cake pan and bake until golden.

While the cake is cooling, start the frosting.  Beat the butter and add the cocoa-sugar mixture.

It won’t look very good, but once you add the brewed coffee (at room temperature), it will smooth out.

Make sure the cake is cold! Never frost a warm cake.  Mine formed a bit of a dome, so using a serrated knife, I sliced it off and then shared that thin layer with a very appreciative DH.

Some beauty shots.

I thoughtfully sliced the cake for James, because I thought he'd want to share with colleagues. Turned out I was wrong and he ate most of it himself.

Full disclosure: The first time I made this cake it was a bit of a disaster. I followed the recipe: Used an eight inch square pan, greased (and not floured). The cake wouldn't release, but it was so good, I thought I'd try again.

My attempt to salvage the cake failed miserably, but at least I could eat my mistake.

Production notes: I followed this recipe exactly, and it resulted in failure. Save yourself the heartache by greasing and flouring the pan, and use a nine-inch round pan. And be sure your butter is at room temperature, i.e., pretty soft.

This very simple frosting is from The General’s Cook Book, a 1961 collection published by the Women’s Board of Akron General Hospital.

James, on his last day of work.

Date Cake

Last week, when I COULD NOT stop eating some delicious dried dates, I needed to take emergency action before I consumed the entire pound in one sitting. The solution was to bake these beauties into a wonderful date cake, a moist and yummy confection that's as good three days after it's baked as it is fresh from the oven.

Recipes featuring dates were extremely popular in the early to mid-20th century, when the vintage recipe card I used was probably written. Dried dates -- available year-round when most fruits were out of season up north -- added sweetness and moisture to all manner of baked goods.

I did not follow the confusing instructions (which I later figured out called for beating the butter, adding the sugar and THEN the egg) but simply mixing them all at once worked fine.

Spoon the batter into a greased and floured pan. I used a round pan, but this cake would be better in a square pan.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. The edges of the cake will separate from the sides. Let it cool in the pan for about ten to 15 minutes...

before turning it out to cool completely.

Cake as Pac Man.

Because the instructions on the original recipe card are literally all over the place, I rewrote it for easy baking.

Date Cake

Preheat oven to 350 F

Grease and flour an 8 x 8 inch square or 9-inch round pan. (Square pan is best.)

1 c chopped dates
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 c chopped nuts
1 c boiling water
1/2 c (one stick) unsalted butter
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t salt
1 t vanilla or almond extract

In a bowl, combine dates, baking soda and boiling water.  Set aside.
In another bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, cloves and salt.

Cream butter, add sugar and blend well.
Add egg and combine.
Add date mixture.  Add nuts.
Add dry ingredients and blend.
Add in flavoring (vanilla or almond)
Combine well, pour into prepared pan and bake 35 to 40 minutes.
Let cool slightly and turn out of pan.
Dust with confectioner's sugar if desired.


Production notes: Do not add the nuts to the first mixture, which is covered with boiling water. That would make them too soft. I've also found that non-pitted dates are moister, so I use those, but the pitted ones would also be fine, especially because they are softened by the boiling water.

World's Easiest Pumpkin Bars

Sometimes when things are too easy, one suspects that they will fail -- like, what's the catch?  But these moist and delicious pumpkin bars prove that one can bake their cake (easily) and eat it too.

This recipe is so simple and so quick, that it's the perfect baking project for children. With ingredients found in most pantries, you can put together the batter for this dessert in minutes.  As with many vintage recipes, this one is incorrectly titled, for this is a sheet cake, not typical bar cookies.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!

 How easy is this? Truly, just dump all the ingredients in a single bowl and

mix thoroughly until combined.  Pour into a 9 x 13 inch pan and bake.

Voila! Pumpkin sheet cake!

Cool slightly and cut into bars.

Production notes: I followed this recipe exactly, baking it in a 9 x 13 inch pan. When it was written, cans of pumpkin contained 16 ounces. Today, most have just 15 ounces, but it will be fine with the slightly lesser amount.

Typical of many vintage dessert recipes, this is not overly sweet. So you can make a frosting of confectioners sugar mixed with a little milk or simply dust the cake with confectioners sugar.

Rhubarb Cake

Quick, before rhubarb season ends, get a few of these ruby stalks and bake this moist and delicious (and did I say easy?) cake. Its coconut topping puts it over the top. Not sure when the recipe -- written on a sheet of notepaper was recorded --  but I'd guess the 1950s.

Of course, I made this mostly to showcase the fantastic Christmas present (see personalized cake pan above) that I received on Tuesday from my boss.  I know it's July, but this pan -- along with the three others nested in the beautifully wrapped box -- made the wait worth it. Truly, one of the very best gifts I've ever received. (The boss is famous for his extreme thoughtfulness.  Punctuality, not so much.)

Begin the cake by cutting up enough rhubarb to fill two cups.

The batter is easy and traditional -- cream the butter and sugar, add the egg, and then alternately add the buttermilk and the dry ingredients (flour, etc.). Finally, fold in the rhubarb.

Put the batter in your brand-new personalized pan (or any 12 x 9 pan you may have on hand).

Combine the topping ingredients -- coconut, sugar and cinnamon.

Spoon the topping over the batter as evenly as you can and pop it in a 350 F oven.

Voila!  Let it cool and enjoy.

Each of my new pans comes with its own cover, featuring a beautiful graphic of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Production notes:  I used unsalted butter in place of oleo, and used buttermilk (aka sour milk).  This fit nicely in a 12 x 9 inch pan, which I greased and floured, even though it is a non-stick pan. (Why risk the heartache of a cake stuck in a pan?)  For the coconut, I used 1/2 cup of unsweetened coconut flakes (because I had them on hand) and 1/2 cup of sweetened coconut.  But you can use one cup of sweetened coconut -- the rhubarb is tart and extra sugar is never a bad thing.  The recipe's author (a teen, from the looks of the handwriting) neglected to include instructions for adding the rhubarb.  Add it at the end.  I baked it for about 35 minutes, but it could have baked longer.