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Page Two

Pound cake shares a similar history and timeframe with 1234 cake, and many variations have evolved in England and America. Mom used a recipe from my Grandmother Cullison. A denser, coarser-grained cake with a hefty amount of butter, it stays moist longer than less rich cakes. Pound cake didn’t appeal to me as a child, because it’s traditionally not frosted.

After I’d grown up, she found a recipe for Pound Cake Torte with a rich chocolate frosting. I fully embraced the idea, but she didn’t put this decadent dessert in her cookbook. I’ll correct that error by including it as one of my mother’s more noteworthy cooking coups. First, here’s the family recipe for pound cake.

Sour Cream Pound Cake
1 and ½ cups softened butter (3/4 pound)
3 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
3 cups flour
1 cup sour cream
1/4 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and sugar until light; add egg yolks one at a time, beating after each addition. Add soda to the flour and mix, alternating with the sour cream. Fold in stiffly-beaten egg whites. Add vanilla.

Pour into two 5 by 10” well-greased and floured bread pans and bake at 300 degrees for 1 and ½ hours on the bottom rack of oven. If not using as a torte, bake the batter in a tube pan for 2 hours.

Invert pan(s) on cooling rack for 10 minutes and then remove cake(s) from pan(s).

Mom’s Note: Easy, light cake; needs no frosting.

Pound Cake Torte

Frosting for one loaf-shaped pound cake:
1 six-ounce package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
¼ cup hot coffee
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
4 pasteurized egg yolks or egg yolk substitute
½ cup (1/4 pound) butter, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon vanilla

After cake has cooled, slice it horizontally with serrated bread knife into 3 layers.

Put chocolate, butter, coffee, egg yolks and sugar in a sauce pan. Stir over medium heat until well mixed and melted. Let cool and frost cake layers, stack them and frost outside of cake. Toothpicks help prevent slippage with this cake too.

Mom’s Note: This cake will keep in refrigerator for at least a week!

Carrot cake became popular in the 1960s when the health food trend began, so my mother’s interest in it came after I’d left home. She thought carrots too sweet as a vegetable, but they go well in carrot cake. This usage wasn’t new, because people since the medieval era have depended on carrots to sweeten desserts when other of types weren’t available.

Mom acquired a recipe for carrot cake from another friend, Claire Schwartz and quickly passed it on to me. Many versions exist, and we all know that carrot cake wouldn’t be as good without the cream cheese frosting. It became my oldest son, Jim’s favorite birthday cake.

Carrot Cake
1 cup vegetable oil
1 and 1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs, separated
2 cups grated carrots
1 and 1/3 cup flour
1 and 2/3 teaspoon soda
1 and 2/3 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 teaspoon cloves
Salt

Mix sugar, oil and egg yolks and stir in the carrots. Add dry ingredients and fold in beaten egg whites. Pour batter into 9 by 11-inch greased cake pan or 2 round layer pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Cream Cheese Dressing
1 box powdered sugar.
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 Tablespoon softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix ingredients together thoroughly and spread on cooled cake.

My mother loved the authentic taste of butter, cream, eggs and sugar, as the recipes above attest. In her later years, when I’d come for a visit, she’d suggest a drive to Elk Horn, Iowa, for lunch or the Sunday noon buffet at the Danish Inn. Danish immigrants founded the small community in the middle 1800s, and modern-day inhabitants have retained the customs and cuisine of their home country.

On one such excursion, Mom, Ben and I stopped at the Danish bakery on Main Street after lunch to buy some pastries to bring home. The sales clerk explained that they now offered low-fat, sugar-free versions of some items. Mom’s reaction was immediate.

“No, thanks,” she said, “we want the real thing.” She wasn’t about to settle for less than the original sugar-encrusted, butter-laden Danish delicacies.

Recipes are from the collection of Anna May Cullison.

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©2008 Margaret Cullison for SeniorWomen.com

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