SMS - Perfect Pound Cake

This week's SMS recipe, Perfect Pound Cake, was chosen by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. At first I planned on making 3 mini loaves on Sunday; plain, espresso/chocolate marbled, and lime poppy seed respectively. Unfortunately, some unexpected errands came up and I only had time to make one large loaf. A few SMS bakers had commented that the recipe as-is was a bit too plain so I opted for the espresso/chocolate marble. I made a few more changes to the recipe which I noted in the final thoughts/tips section.

The pound cake took a little over an hour to bake. After the cake cooled completely, I cut a few slices from it. I loved the marbled look and the smell of freshly ground espresso beans. The cake's tender crumb was spot on. And it tasted great. Although it was a tad dry, it wasn't too bad. Especially if you're planning on enjoying a slice with a cup of milk, hot cocoa, tea or coffee anyway.

If you'd like to give this recipe a try, please visit Michele's blog. Thanks for a great pick, Michele. We enjoyed it a lot.

Beat until fluffy and pale-colored.

Divide the batter and add ground espresso and Dutch cocoa.

Sniff... this batter smells great.

Ready to go into the oven.

After just a little over an hour in the oven, it looks like this.

An inside look into the beautiful loaf of pound cake.

Marbled slices of espresso/chocolate pound cake.

The cake's texture was soft and tender.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby enjoyed this cake and he normally doesn't like pound cake as they're usually very dry and incredibly heavy and dense. His rating: 8.5 out of 10.
• To give you some insight on the dryness of the cake: on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means perfect moistness and 10 means super-dry, my husband gave it a 3.
• Ingredient changes: used a total of 1 cup + 2 Tbsp of sugar. Once I divided the batter in half, I added 1 Tbsp of freshly ground espresso and 2 Tbsp of Dutch cocoa (sifted).
• Instruction changes: beat room temperature eggs and sugar together until fluffy and pale-colored. Drizzle melted butter into egg/sugar mixture while beating. Alternate flour mixture and cream/vanilla mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture.
  
• Why? I learned that leaveners, such as baking powder and baking soda, increase air bubbles already present in the batter; they don't create air bubbles. Hence my decision to beat as much air into the egg/sugar mixture before adding the flour.
• Check out the SMS blog roll to see how other SMS bakers baked up this pound cake.