Just as every good meal should end with dessert, I decided to wrap up my preview of Gourmet Today with something sweet. And as I flipped through the Cakes chapter, this recipe practically jumped off the page at me. Elvis Presley's Favorite Pound Cake? How could I not make it?
The provenance of this recipe is a little unclear. Gourmet Today's headnote for the recipe doesn't offer any clues about where it comes from, and my research on the internets was inconclusive. So, I don't know if this recipe was something that The King's mom cooked up for him when he was just a prince, or whether it was something that he ate at a favorite restaurant. Wherever the recipe comes from, one thing is for sure: it's good. And by good, I mean really, really good. Like "Sara-Lee-is-drowning-her-sorrows-in-Entenmann's" good. That this cake is so rich, moist and tender is no surprise considering what's in it: two sticks of butter, seven eggs, and a cup of heavy cream. And, the secret to this cake's amazing texture is sifting and beating ... a lot of it. The recipe says to "sift together sifted [cake] flour and salt. Sift again." This instruction has a bit of a "drop and give me twenty, soldier!" tone, but, after tasting the finished result, I'm not going to argue with sifting the flour three times. Nor am I going to complain about having to beat the batter for an additional five minutes just before it goes in the pan.
Next week, we'll be back to our regularly-scheduled programming. I've got a huge backlog of recipes from The Book to blog about, so stay tuned. I'm obviously focusing my efforts on The Project, but I'll keep cooking recipes from Gourmet Today, and every now and then, I might share one that I think is particularly good.
Date Cooked: September 20, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A
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