The BEST Pound Cake!

Cakes have always been my favorite thing to bake. And, what’s the simplest of all cakes- pound cake! You whisk a pound of flour, butter, eggs and sugar, each, and bake until it turns into golden glory. And, you can still do so much to enhance its avatar. Swap some of the moist ingredients for fresh mango puree and it turns into a magical summery delight; swirl in some spoonfuls of Nutella in the batter and…should I say more? Its Nutella!

While searching for more variations of this recipe, I stumbled upon these three beautiful ones-

Wholewheat Almond Buttermilk Pound Cake

I found this recipe on the blog Passionate About Baking by Deeba Rajpal, and, I am glad that I did! I loved the vanilla-almond flavor and the perfect texture (inspite of it being wholewheat).

Ghee Cake

An amazing recipe that I found on Reshmi Mahesh’s blog Fun Wid Fud was of this incredible ghee cake! I had never baked with ghee before so, I was slightly apprehensive about this to be honest but, it turned out yum and so light; the texture was so elegant. The aroma of ghee wasn’t overpowering as well, though the cake turned out slightly greasy (due to obvious reasons) but, we aren’t complaining!

Vegan Cream Cheese Pound Cake

This recipe is particularly interesting. I found it on the blog Vegan Richa by Richa Hingle. A very few people know that I have tried my hand at vegan baking and this is the only vegan cake recipe that has ever worked for me! What’s interesting is that it uses vegan cream cheese (though I used cashew cream as a substitute, as suggested in the recipe). The cake turned out perfectly fine but was a little heavy, maybe due to the richness of the cashew cream.

Final Verdict

Out of the three, my absolute favorite was Deeba’s Wholewheat Almond Buttermilk Pound Cake; by far, the best pound cake I’ve had in a long time!

WHOLEWHEAT ALMOND BUTTERMILK POUND CAKE

Source: Passionate About Baking

Ingredients:

• 1+1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup almond meal
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 100g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup vanilla sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean powder
• 100ml buttermilk
• 100ml low fat cream, chilled
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• Few drops almond extract
• 50-75 fresh strawberries (I used chopped almonds)
  
• Handful fresh mint leaves (omitted)
  

Method:

1. Grease and flour the sides of a 8″ ring tin, line the bottom and sides with baking parchment. (I used a bundt pan instead).
   
2. Preheat the oven to 170C.
3. Sift the wholewheat and almond flour / almond meal with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Reserve.
4. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract, almond extract and vanilla bean powder.
   
5. With the beater on low add the flour mix and buttermilk alternately in three lots.
6. Bake for 50-60 minutes till golden brown on top, and the tester comes out clean.
7. Top with almond whipped cream, whip the cream, icing sugar and almond extract until medium peaks.
8. Top with fresh fruit or nuts.