HCB - Mini Vanilla Bean Pound Cake

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the Mini Vanilla Bean Pound Cake. Perfect timing! I recently got some vanilla beans from Kitchen Window and was contemplating what to put them (so many choices!!). Even though I stored the vanilla beans inside the cupboard, as soon as you entered the kitchen, you could smell their aroma. Just wonderful! Who came up with the term "plain vanilla" anyway? There's nothing plain about vanilla beans!!!

A slice each of the Vanilla Bean Pound Cake for hubby and I :o)

The cake batter requires sugar to be mixed with the seeds from the vanilla bean. I didn't want to dirty my big food processor and so I turned to my spice grinder. Snif snif... it still smells from my homemade Garam Massala. Now what? I sacrificed some sugar by grinding it in there and throwing it away. Snif snif... much better! In goes part of the sugar needed for the cake and the vanilla seeds. A few pulses and done!

Ta-da - homemade vanilla sugar ;o)

I took 2 sticks of butter out of the fridge and used half a stick to make biscotti for a different baking group. As I was ready to add the butter to the dry ingredients, I took a closer look at the recipe and saw that I needed 13 Tbsp, not 12. Oh boy! So I added 1 Tbsp of canola oil instead. I know, it's not the same but I figured it's such a small amount, it wouldn't hurt anything.

The batter is ready to be poured into the loaf pans and ramekins

I weighed the batter for the loaf pans and then eyeballed the amount for the small ramekins I used.

Ready for the trip to the oven!

While the cakes were baking, I made the syrup. I don't use alcohol so I substituted water for the vanilla cognac. I considered orange juice but feared it would take away from the vanilla aroma. Then I thought of vanilla extract but that might discolor the cake, so water it was. I was lazy and brushed the syrup on top of the cakes only. The cake seemed to absorb all of it pretty well.

I didn't have a pretty slit in the middle but it's ok. Will try harder next time :o)

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I liked the pound cake a lot. Its delicate vanilla aroma and buttery flavor is what made this pound cake shine. We found it to be a touch on the dry side, but I might have overbaked it ever so slightly. My husband gave this a 9 out of 10. That is pretty good, considering he's not into sweets that are overly buttery.
• A couple of my coworkers got to try this cake too. They were all surprised how vanilla-ey it was.