The m(b)aking of a pound cake!!

I have been thinking of baking a cake from scratch for a long long time now.I wanted to start with a basic pound cake. I had book marked a bunch of sites on the internet on the recipe for the same. You see, my favorite hobby is to read the recipes of all sorts of food items.  :)

I got some time last week and also all the ingredients were at home.So thought of trying it out. It came out pretty well. I have posted the recipe and the steps that I followed here.

Pound Cake Recipe

Ingredients

All purpose flour - 1 and 1/2 cups
Unsalted butter - 2 sticks / 1 cup / 227 grams
Granulated white sugar - 3/4 cups
Baking Powder - 1 teaspoon
Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
Pure Vanilla essence - 1and 1/2 teaspoon
Eggs (Large) - 3
Milk - 3 tablespoons

Points to note:

• Pre - heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• This recipe makes one loaf in a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
• Make sure the butter , eggs and milk are in the room temperature.
• After adding the dry ingredients to the flour, make sure to either sift the flour or to mix it well so that the baking powder gets mixed evenly with the flour. Else, you might end up seeing big holes in the cake here and there.

Butter the loaf pan on all sides.Line the bottom of the pan with a parchment paper.Butter the parchment paper. For people like me, who do not have a parchment paper, just dust the bottom of the pan with a very little flour.
Add the butter (did i say already that it should be in room temperature :) ) and the sugar and beat it well with an electric hand mixer till it becomes creamy(for about couple of minutes). Start with slowest speed and increase it gradually. Make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl in between.Then add the eggs(again here at room temperature please) one by one and beat it with the electric mixer after each egg is added. Once all 3 eggs are added and blended well, add vanilla essence and the milk and beat it again for a minute.

Mix the salt and baking powder with the flour and sift it to make sure the baking powder is evenly mixed with the flour.(This is another point to re-iterate. Make doubly sure that you are mixing the dry ingredients properly. Believe me, I am talking about it with experience ;) ) . Add this flour mixture to the beaten wet ingredients and beat it again for around a minute to mix all of them together.

Pour this batter into the loaf pan and level the batter with the back of a spoon. Bake this at 350 degrees F for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. (Ha Ha, the typical line that is associated with cake baking :) ).

Remove the cake from the oven and cool it for 10 minutes in the pan.After 10 minutes, transfer the cake to a wire rack and cool completely.Do not worry about the crack that develops on the top.It is normal to have a crack(At least that's what I have heard from the experts. So I didn't worry about that :) )

Enjoy a slice of this cake with a hot cup of tea. No wonder, it is called tea cake back in my hometown.. It makes perfect combination with tea. hmmm.... yummy!!!!