When the New York Times food pages ran an article (4/08/15) on the family recipes from poet Tracy K. Smith, it included one for pound cake and another for Alabama Lemon Cheese Cake. I was drawn to the pound cake recipe immediately because it sounded so good and I love pound cake. The recipe was written with the Times‘ relatively new practice of giving both metric and traditional cup measures. I made the cake using the gram measurements.
The cake turned out to be one of the best versions of pound cake. It was extremely buttery, dense and rich, improving in flavor the more it stayed in a covered cake dome on the counter. I published my version here last year, giving the ingredients in weight as well as the cup measures.
My original pound cake adaptation using gram measurements
I made the cake many times since. Then I finally noticed a disparity in the Times’ calculation of equivalent measures of cups and grams. Both the flour and sugar gram/cup equivalents were way wrong.
One cup of flour is 120 grams. The recipe called for 3 cups cake flour measured after sifting. The gram measurement listed in the recipe was 270 grams. Wrong. It should have been 360 grams (120 g x 3). I wrote to the Times about the mistake and their remedy was to remove the gram measurements entirely rather than to offer a version with correct weight in grams. So I wondered, which one was correct? Didn’t they want to retest the recipe? Most likely an old family recipe from an American kitchen would not have been written in metrics. Someone at the Times test kitchen (do they still have one?) clearly miscalculated.
As for the sugar that too had a mistake. Three cups of sugar equals 600 grams (200 grams per cup). The Times recipe called for 540 grams, which is about 2 2/3 to 2 3/4 cups instead of three.
I’ve made this cake probably ten times using the gram measurements. And I’m forever grateful to discover the Times blooper that resulted in a great pound cake
Finally, just last week I decided to make the cake using the Times recipe with cup weights. When I’ve made the cake using gram measurements, I put the batter into a 9-inch Bundt pan. This time I put it into a 10-inch tube pan because it was a bigger batter with more flour and sugar. The batter was a tad shy in filling up the 10-inch pan and would have been too much for a 9-inch pan.
The cake came out just fine, though it wasn’t as spectacular as the gram-weight version. That one was very buttery, nearly wet with butter because of less flour and sugar. The baking time was a little tricky, though, varying each time I made it. Refer to the original post, Pound for Pound to see how it was written. See link to view the recipe that now stands in the Times archive pages. Interestingly there was another recipe in the article for Alabama Lemon Cheese Cake. That one, written with cups and grams, retains all the mistakes that the pound cake originally had.
My suggestion is to make the gram version. I’ve given that recipe below showing the corrected equivalent cup and gram measures.Try both versions and see what you think. The original cup version is classic and the gram version is spectacular.
This is the recipe using the correct equivalents between grams and cups.
Ingredients
- 12 ounces (3 sticks) best butter, at room temperature
- About 2 3/4 cups (540 grams) sugar
- 6 large organic eggs, at room temperature
- 2 1/4 cups (270 grams) sifted cake flour, measured after sifting
- 1 cup high quality cold heavy cream, preferably unpasteurized
- 1 overflowing tablespoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Generously butter and lightly flour a 9-inch Bundt pan. Set aside.
- In the large bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar on medium high speed for about 3 minutes or until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Starting with the flour add in thirds the flour and the heavy cream, mixing in on low speed until mixed well. Add the vanilla and combine on low speed.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, tapping the cake pan on the counter once to get rid of any air pockets. Put on the middle shelf of the preheated oven and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. You might need a little extra cooking time, but a knife inserted in the center should come out clean.
- Allow the cake to cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes and then upend onto a rack to cool completely, bottom end up. Let cool to room temperature before serving. You can store the cake for several days in a covered cake stand on the counter or a covered cake tin.
