Mama’s Pound Cake

(Basic Whipping Cream Pound cake)

poundcake2***Cook’s note…Mama sometimes follows a series of pound cake recipes from a wonderful cookbook that is a perennial favorite in Perry, Mrs. Nelle Tuggle Shelton’s cookbook, Treasures from Home. Mama has made pound cakes so often through the years that her recipe can vary, and each pound cake is often a new, delicious creation! Sour cream or cream cheese makes a super pound cake, but one will need to follow those type cake recipes...it’s not a simple substitution for whipping cream. Oh the chemistry of baking!

6 large eggs, room temperature
1 stick of butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 cup of Crisco
3 cups of plain flour
1/2 pint of whipping cream

Cream the shortenings (butter and Crisco) with the sugar until they are fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating each egg well into the batter.

Sift the flour and begin alternately adding it with the cream into the batter...start with flour and end with flour.

Add the vanilla.

Pour the batter into a buttered and floured tube or bunt pan and bake at 300 for one hour and fifteen minutes in a COLD oven…no pre-heating. Cook for another fifteen minutes at 325 to brown the top or until a wooden skewer inserted comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool for a few minutes…turn upside down onto a plate…use another plate to turn it back up…the actual top of a pound cake can be a debate…I like the top that was the top in the oven. Enjoy!

- Recipe courtesy of James Farmer III