• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 764 0

pound cake has no added leavening, just the air that gets incorporated into the batter during mixing. The resulting cake is deliciously dense—a cake texture that has fallen out of favor as cake manufacturers attempt to inflate profits by pumping up their pound cakes with leavening gases in place of more expensive butter, eggs, flour, and sugar. Real pound cake is firm enough to toast on a grill; ersatz pound cake is too soft and has a tendency to fall apart during grilling. The pound cake recipe that follows toasts beautifully, but if you’ve got a favorite recipe or have access to a great bakery pound cake, by all means use that. Once you have the cake, this recipe is effortless. Cake slices are brushed with cardamom honey butter, and after toasting on the grill, they’re topped with more of the butter mixed with rum-soaked raisins. Serve with ice cream—rum raisin, of course.

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons raisins, chopped

2 tablespoons dark or golden rum

3 tablespoons honey

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 slices Real Pound Cake from Scratch, about ½ inch thick (recipe follows)

DIRECTIONS:

Soak the raisins in the rum in a small bowl for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the honey and cardamom in a small saucepan just until warm, about 20 seconds. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter until melted.

Brush the pound cake slices on both sides with half the butter mixture. Pour the remaining butter mixture into the bowl with the rum and raisins and set aside until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes.

Light a grill for direct medium-high heat, 375°F.

Brush the grill grate and coat with oil. Grill the pound cake slices until grill-marked on both sides, 20 seconds per side, turning the slices 90 degrees halfway through to make crosshatch marks.

Serve the pound cake warm topped with the rum raisin sauce.

Real Pound Cake from Scratch

MAKES 1 CAKE

INGREDIENTS:

Flour-and-oil baking spray

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1½ cups sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

5 extra-large eggs

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Coat a standard loaf pan (8 by 4 by 2½ inches) with the baking spray and set aside.

With an electric mixer, beat the butter with the sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

Then beat in the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time. Add the sifted flour, beating just until the batter is smooth. Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 1 hour. If the top of the cake begins to brown too much, cover loosely with foil.

Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes. Unmold, and cool on a rack to room temperature.

CAKE

Grilled Cornmeal and Summer Berry Clafouti

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

Clafouti, a traditional country dessert from the Limousin region of France, is half custard and half cake. Loaded with fruit (classically cherries), it has a crispy crust and a moist, mousse-like center, the perfect textural context for the bottom-up baking that happens on a grill. The consistency of this clafouti is further enhanced by a gritty addition of cornmeal, giving it a rustic crumb, well suited to a fire-baked confection.

INGREDIENTS:

Flour-and-oil baking spray

1 cup yellow cornmeal

½ cup all-purpose flour

¾ cup sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1½ cups low-fat buttermilk

2 pints blueberries

1 pint raspberries

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons rum or fruit brandy

Confectioners’ sugar for sprinkling (optional)

½ cup heavy cream, warmed (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Light a grill for indirect medium heat, about 325°F. Coat the interior of a heavy 9-inch round layer-cake pan with the baking spray and set aside.

Mix together the cornmeal, flour, ½ cup of the sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs and buttermilk and mix together until the dry ingredients are all moistened. Fold in 1 pint of the blueberries and 1 cup of the raspberries just