Granny Mac’s Cold Oven Pound Cake

It’s November, and that means it’s time to blog like crazy — 30 posts in 30 days. This year, I’m going to write about something that brings all southerners (heck, most everybody everywhere) together: food.

My family is that family who’s barely finished one meal before they start talking about what they’ll cook for the next. Many of our happiest times have been spent cutting up (literally and figuratively) in the kitchen, sharing meals with each other and our friends, learning how to make the family’s favorite dishes and then teaching the younger generation how to make them too. That’s why for the next month, I’m going to share with you some of my family’s favorite recipes and dishes as well as recipes for some typical southern favorites.

Now since some of these recipes are passed down verbally or learned by watching, I can’t guarantee exact measurements all the time. There might be some pinches, dashes, and “until it looks rights.” That’s just home cooking. Where I do have exact measurements or an honest to God recipe to go by, I’ll give it to you. Plus, I’m not a food writer or a recipe developer, so I’ll do the best I can.

Here we go.

Everyone should have at least one never-fail recipe for something to take somewhere. Whether it was a covered dish dinner, family reunion, birth of a baby, funeral, or just because, my Granny Mac always took the same thing — her cold oven pound cake. As far as I’m concerned, this cake is perfect. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, dense in a good way so you can hold it in your hand and eat it, good for dessert with coffee, better at breakfast with coffee. You can make it in your old beat-up tube pan or in a fancy cathedral window bundt pan; either way it will work out.

I’ve taken taken this recipe to more things than I can count, and now you can too.

Granny Mac’s Cold Oven Pound Cake

Ingredients

• 2 sticks of butter
• 3 cups of sugar
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups of Swans Down Cake Flour
• Pinch of salt
• ½ pint of whipping cream
• Your favorite flavoring (I like to use about a Tbsp of vanilla and a Tbsp of almond flavoring, but you can use lemon or whatever you like.)

Directions

1. Grease and flour your pan.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs.
4. Mix the salt with the flour and add the flour to the butter mixture alternating it with the cream.
5. Stir in flavorings.
6. Pour the batter into your pan and put it the oven.
7. Turn the oven to 312°. Now my new digital oven will only do increments of five, so I have to set it to 315°, which seems to work out ok.
8. Bake it until you can stick a toothpick in and it comes out clean. About an hour. Maybe a little more.
9. When it’s done, let it cool a little while and turn it out on to a pretty plate.