Best Pound Cake Ever
Best Pound Cake Ever (aka Mary Jo Bowen’s Pound Cake)
Servings 10
Ingredients
- 8 oz unsalted butter, cool room temp (230 grams)
- 3 cups superfine sugar, divided use (600 grams)
- 6 large eggs separated, cool room temp
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon pure almond extract
- 1 cup sour cream, cool room temp 260 grams
- 3 cups sifted cake flour -- updated from 330, I found 300 works better (300 grams)
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Spray a 10 inch tube pan or 12 cup Bundt pan with flour-added baking spray.
- Sift together dry ingredients; Set aside.
- in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and 2 ½ cups (500g) of sugar until light and creamy. For best results, beat for a long time -- about 8 minutes, adding the sugar gradually. Beat in egg yolks one at a time.
- Beat in extracts.
- Remove bowl from stand and sift in the flour mixture ½ cup at a time, alternating with the sour cream. Stir or fold with a heavy duty scraper to mix.
- In a clean metal bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining ½ cup (100g) of sugar until shiny, soft, billowy peaks. Do not overbeat. Fold into batter.
- Bake for 50-75 minutes, until cake tests done. Alternately, you can bake the cake at 300 degrees F. for about 2 hours. This is my latest favorite way to bake it -- slow and low.
Notes
Make sure your ingredients are at room temperature and weigh the flour and sugar. If you have a food processor or grinder of some sort, grind the sugar for a finer crumb.
