good eats

my maternal grandmother, who cooked at least two meals a day and made biscuits from scratch every single day of her adult life, still found time to enter cake contests just for the fun of it. on any given day, she’d find new cake contests, conjure up new recipes, bake test cakes. granddaddy was her taste tester, and perhaps that’s why it still surprises me when i remember how much he loved my pound cake. grandmother would win contests with fancy cakes (her pineapple upside-down cake was a perennial winner), and i’m sure granddaddy was proud of her, but he never quit publicly praising my plain ole, every day ordinary pound cake.

i bake my pound cake only for holidays and special events, and this year i look forward to mixing it up in my new red mixer, a gift from my manchild. since thanksgiving is right around the corner, i thought i’d share my recipe with you:

my secret to the crunchy, crispy crust? when i remove the cake from the oven, i let it cool for 5-10 minutes, then i turn the pan upside down on a cooling rack covered with was paper and remove the cake pan. i immediately put another wax paper-covered cooling rack on the exposed bottom, and flip the cake so that it’s sitting right-side-up to cool.

now lookahere: if you want a devilishly good bedtime snack or breakfast, cut you a slice of leftover pound cake, spread a little butter or margarine on it, and stick it in the oven on broil for a few minutes.

you can thank me later – right now you’ve got a grocery list to make.