- Hey everyone you're watching Preppy Kitchen
where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make
delicious homemade dishes to
share with your family and friends.
Today we're making an easy, delicious and
just plain amazing vanilla pound cake.
Pound for pound, it's the best you've ever had.
Let's get started.
First off I'm adding one and a half cups or 180 grams
of all-purpose flour into a large bowl with a sifter over it
180 exactly.
One teaspoon of salt for balance.
It makes a big difference.
And half a teaspoon of baking powder for leavening.
Traditionally a poundcake was actually
a pound of butter,
a pound of eggs
and a pound of a flour.
I made that recipe and it was...
not the best cake I've ever had in my life.
So I spent some time tweaking it and
this is a really nice, moist delicious version
that you can gussy up with different flavors if you like.
Sift this into your bowl, whisk it up
and we're gonna set it aside.
Now it's time for the butter.
Into the bowl of my stand mixer
fitted with a paddle attachment,
I'm adding one cup or 226 grams of unsalted butter
(sounds of something dropping)
They're still work getting done on the house today.
We are not finished yet.
It is a very, very cold day here
so I actually had to like microwave this butter
just a little bit at half-power, like 10 seconds,
to warm it up to room temperature.
Room temperature means that you can put your finger
on the butter and leave like an indent
when you press in lightly.
It's not gonna melt away, it's not gonna be too firm.
That's what room temperature means.
Let's cream it up just for a second.
(whirring sounds)
There we go.
All right once that's started.
One cup or 200 grams of sugar.
There ya go.
After your butter is like kind of nice and fluffy
just scrape the bowl down really quick.
While the mixer is running on like medium-low
we're gonna add the eggs in one at a time,
let the eggs incorporate. Don't dump them in all at once.
It's just messier that way.
Okay so now scrape that bowl down again.
I have like an egg soup and hard butter on the outside.
I'm gonna let that run for a minute
just so things get nice and homogenous.
That looks pretty good.
If you see tiny clumps of butter, it's okay.
It'll all work out in the bake.
So you know love I love some sour cream in cakes.
It gives you a lot of moisture, a little bit of tang
and it's just delicious.
If you can't find it where you live,
plain yogurt works amazingly well too.
You can also sub in buttermilk instead.
All right.
One half of a cup which is 120mL.
Although I don't know.
Sour cream, is that a grams situation or milliliters?
You can let me know in the comments.
I am never sure which one it is.
In you go. Let's mix it up.
This recipe has two tablespoons that are
about 30 milliliters of vanilla.
And I happened to get a really nice gift box
from Nielsen and Massey with all the
different vanillas from the world.
This one's Mexican vanilla
which I'm using because of my heritage.
They all taste a little bit different so it's really neat
to kind of just sample the slight
differences in those orchids.
My mom was horrified that
I didn't use any zest in this recipe.
She would always have an orange or lemon zest.
And you can do that too.
I'm keeping it kind of like a standard pound cake
that you can alter however you'd like.
If you're going for the zest, just add in about
a tablespoon or two.
It'll be amazing and very fragrant.
Okay let's mix that up one last time.
Oh, this is so nice.
All right, I'm just gonna dump the flour in
and then mix it up.
On low.
Until it's almost just combined
and then you'll just finish it off by hand.
You'll also want to scrape the bowl down anyways
so you might as well scrape
and do a little bit of hand mixing.
It gives you a nice control of the batter
and you're gonna be sure not to over-activate any of that
gluten and get like a bready cake.
No one wants a bready cake.
All right, scraping the bowl down.
There's a lot of flour on the sides
and some butter on the bottom, so just give it a final mix.
And I am seeing like these little granules of butter.
It's just because it's cold here right now.
Don't worry about it.
Just like in my vanilla cake, if you see those little
butter pieces it'll melt and be delicious in the oven.
Not a problem.
Just to show you what I mean with the butter.
Look, this is room temperature but it is hard.
Too hard for baking.
It is good though for rubbing onto your pan.
We need to butter and flour this pan
so everything releases nicely.
And if you want you could just use parchment paper.
That works amazingly well too and it lifts out even easier.
But I will be buttering and flouring today.
Takin' it old school.
This is a one-and-a-half pound loaf pan.
But you know any loaf pan will do basically.
All right.
And if there's any globs just use your clean fingers
to spread it to the edge.
Kick around about a tablespoon of flour.
Get it all the way up to the sides.
And a classic poundcake will have
like that nice crack in the center.
It'll be a little bit caramelized on the edges.
It's not like a layer cake where you know
I'm kind of a crazy person and I want it to be like
perfectly light colored.
Very soft on the sides.
You want like kind of a bit of a
almost crunch for the very edge.
Gives you a nice play of textures.
Meanwhile all the people that like that
on their regular layer cakes are like
"That's what I'm talking about!"
All right, put the excess back.
And we're ready to pour.
Just pour that cake batter right in there.
It'll self-level out. Don't worry.
This goes into the oven, center rack,
350 fahrenheit for about 40 minutes.
You'll see kind of golden brown at the edge.
Cracked on top with you know a
skewer coming out clean in the center.
It'll be amazing.
Let's put her in there.
There's something just so satisfying
about a plain loaf cake.
I don't know what it is but it's just like
that little something extra.
Like, "Piece of toast? No no no, I'll have some poundcake.
I'm fine, thanks.
Startin' the morning off right."
If you like this recipe check out my cake playlist.
All of my favorite cakes, so many different recipes.
And you'll find one at least to fall in love with.
Okay time for a bite.
It just has the perfect crumb.
And it's kind of like really substantial.
Perfectly sweet and just like kind of crisp
on the outside on the caramelized edges.
Super soft on the inside. Mmm.
All right, if you like this recipe, hit that like button
and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.