pound cake | two yolks

Angela has class on Tuesday nights which means I’m home alone (although I don’t have to fight a couple of bungling burglars with improvised comedic devices). My dinner on those nights is usually something Angela doesn’t like but I was feeling a bit lazy last night so just made a sandwich. I did, however, decide to make a surprise for her when she came home.

This recipe has been sitting on our refrigerator door for about 6 months now. We originally picked it up at Penzeys Spices on our first visit to their retail store. I made it last night because I wanted something for breakfast the next day and the recipe card proclaims “This cake is wonderful for dessert but even better for breakfast.” Cake for breakfast? How could I not be all over that? (Of course, I’ve never had cake for breakfast before; never).

In regards to Penzeys, on that first visit I decided to buy cinnamon sticks because freshly grated cinnamon has to make food better, doesn’t it? I’m really not sure if food is better with freshly grated cinnamon, but I do know that it’s a pain to grate a full tablespoon of cinnamon. Here I was looking for any easy surprise to bake for my wife and instead I spend 15 minutes microplaning a cinnamon stick. Of course I decided to do this after I started mixing the cake ingredients. Mis-en-what?

I found some of the typesetting of this recipe to be a bit odd. In the ingredients list, the word cups was capitalized for no particular reason. Also, PURE VANILLA EXTRACT, CINNAMON SUGAR, and CINNAMON were in all-caps. I’m assuming it’s because Penzeys sells products by those names but why not do what every other brand does and specify your brand there (are they fooling anyone?). The way it looks, they’re just yelling at me (that better be PURE VANILLA EXTRACT or else!). My final comment would be that it listed 3 teaspoons of baking powder instead of 1 tablespoon. I have no idea what the purpose of that would be (do many people have tablespoon measuring spoons that don’t fit into their baking powder jar? my oversized plastic ones do).

Cinnamon Pound Cake
Adapted from Penzeys One, volume 1 issue 3, originally by Scott and Jackie Nelson

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup milk
5 tbsp cinnamon sugar (or 1 tbsp cinnamon mixed with 4 tbsp sugar)

Preheat oven to 300° F.
Grease a loaf pan (the recipe wants you to use a tube pan which I’ve never heard of; it fits perfectly in a loaf pan plus that’s the shape every pound cake I’ve ever seen has been).
Cream the butter.
Add the eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix well.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder (the recipe specifies sifting but I cheated and just mixed them).
Add half the flour to the butter mixture. Mix to combine.
Add the milk to the butter mixture. Mix to combine.
Add the remaining flour to the butter mixture. Mix to combine.
Sprinkle 1/3 of the cinnamon sugar on the bottom of the loaf pan.
Add half of the batter to the loaf pan (really try for half; I failed and it was much closer to 3/4 than half but it still tasted good).
Sprinkle 1/3 of the cinnamon sugar on top of the batter in the loaf pan.
Add the remaining batter to the loaf pan.
Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar on the top of the batter.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.