"The Best Pound Cake I Ever Tasted"

What a great dessert to carry to meetings, reunions, funerals, homecomings, tailgates, parties and potluck.  Pound Cake!

My mentor librarian, Ethelene Dyer Jones, had a really good recipe for pound cake.  Ethelene made so many that her husband, Rev. Grover Jones, learned how to make them too and baked them often himself.


Ethelene & Grover Jones' Pound Cake:

3 1/2 cups sifted plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cup shortening
2 1/2 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons of 2 different flavorings (lemon, almond, vanilla or butternut)

Sift together the sifted flour, salt and baking powder.  Beat together shortening and sugar and continue to beat, adding eggs on at a time.  Continue to beat, adding dry ingredients alternately with milk.  Beat well after each addition.  Beat in flavorings at end.  Bake in a greased and floured tube pan at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

For their Walking Across Egypt Gwinnett Reads a few years ago, Gwinnett County Public Library including a couple of pound cake baking contests as part of the festivities.  The staff winner was submitted by Anne Henson.

Aunt Hortense's Poundcake


2 sticks butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla flavoring
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup heavy whipping cream at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Whip the butter until creamy.  Add the vanilla and whip until well-mixed.  Gradually add the sugar and whip the butter and sugar on high speed for several minutes.  Reduce the speed and add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each one.  Add salt to flour.  Alternate mixing the flour and cream into the butter/sugar, ending with flour.  Pour batter into a greased tube pan and run knife through the batter to prevent air pockets.  Bake for 1 1/2 hours.  Let cake cool before removing from pan.

(Thanks to author Clyde Edgerton for "The Best Pound Cake I Ever Tasted" phrase.)