Cake #2: Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Before making the second cake, I searched a couple of local kitchen and hardware stores for a tube pan or bundt pan without non-stick coating. I couldn't find any. Then I looked on amazon.com and again, most of the pans I found had non-stick coating. Melissa suggested getting a good, long-lasting tube and bundt pan for $25-$50, but I also didn't find anything I liked that was that expensive. I ended up buying this pan for $11.

It only holds 10 cups (and the book suggested a pan that holds 16 cups) but it seems to work great for 1/2 recipes, which is what I'm doing right now.
By the way, there is no way I would have made it this far in the book (yes, all the way to recipe #2) without my Kitchen Aid Mixer. I got mine for free from my friends John & Kevin, but if you don't have awesome friends willing to give you expensive kitchen appliances, here's a link to the style I use.


I made this cake on January 9th.
To make this cake, you basically add the ingredients one at a time into the big mixer bowl while it rotates on medium speed. Melissa says to cream the butter and shortening together, but she doesn't say why. I used a stick of butter (Hy-Vee brand unsalted) with 1/4 cup of Earth Balance vegan margarine. I'm guessing that qualifies as "shortening". I just want to know why shortening is necessary, if I'm ever out of it can I just use butter? (I only have some because I take it camping- butter sticks get waterlogged in a cooler after a few days)

Then you mix brown sugar with regular sugar. My "regular" sugar comes from an Amish-run bulk food store in Kalona, Iowa- it's pretty much raw sugar. It has bigger granules than white (granulated) sugar and it is much darker.

In "All Cakes Considered", she explains that brown sugar is granulated white sugar with the molasses added back in. Molasses is a by-product from removing the sugar crystals from the sugarcane. That would explain why most of my guests doubt me when I tell them our regular sugar is not brown sugar- it must still have some of that molasses in it. Anyway, I used my raw sugar because that's what I always use and I have a ton of it. (I keep granulated sugar around because the raw sugar doesn't dissolve in cold liquid very well.)

So I slowly added the sugars, eggs, flour and other ingredients one at a time. The last ingredient was chopped pecans. My chopper sucks, but I got it done. It's a Zyliss, and I don't have a problem with the brand, it's just that my chopper not only doesn't chop well, it doesn't come apart so it's really hard to clean.

The recipe said to bake for 70 minutes, but it was done after 55 minutes since it was a half recipe.
I made the cream cheese frosting, and I cut that recipe in half, which resulted in too much frosting. Also, I completely forgot to read the instructions, which tell you what order to add all the frosting ingredients to the mixer, and how many minutes to beat each one. I just threw them all in and put the mixer on medium-high for several minutes, and it seemed to work out fine.
The frosting was good, but the cake was already sweet and probably didn't need the sweet frosting added to it. We decided this cake would be better with ice cream on the side instead of frosting.

That's me frosting the cake.
The cake wasn't as fluffy and light as the Yogurt Pound Cake, it tasted richer and sweeter. It had a good flavor and the "crust" end was crunchy and you could really taste the brown sugar in it. I liked the pecan flavor in every bite- the flavor was there without it seeming like a "nutty" cake.
My husband thinks this cake would be great with rum added to the recipe.
Two recipes down, and my cake book is already sticky.