A Pound for a Pound

Hi everyone!
So this morning, I woke up super pumped to do my workout. Actually, that isn’t the case at all. I am not a morning person at all, so I had to drag my half awake butt out of bed to start my day. However, I was relatively excited to work out because a couple of friends were joining me for a mid-morning workout followed by a quick lunch and walk to the beach.

For lunch, I knew we would be having pasta with tomato sauce I made yesterday. I also made some cheese breadsticks (well, supposed to be breadsticks but turned out more like biscuits/cookies — hence, no picture). For dessert, I decided to make lemon pound cake. But, since I did not have much time to make the pound cake, and it takes a little under an hour to bake, I decided to put it in the oven as we started our workout and take it out when we finished. Of course, nothing ever goes that well. My friends came late, and I had naively put the pound cake in the oven, so I was running over to the oven mid-workout covered in sweat to check on my pound cake  (now does the blog title make sense? I was proud of my own creativity. I’ll give myself a light pack on the back…). I can only imagine the not-so-pleasant mix of sweat, tomato sauce, and pound cake that permeated our apartment. Sorry neighbors!

Now, back to pound cake. Seriously, one of the easiest desserts to make. I’ve made it several times (with both milk & buttermilk), and have yet to receive a complaint. The texture from the milk/buttermilk makes the pound cake taste heavenly without being too rich & making you feel guilty.  My friend managed to polish off about 1/2 of the pound cake after our workout, and hopefully yours will too! We were too quick to gobble up the pound cake, so I forgot to take pictures (sorry :(), but I will see if I can attempt to snap a picture of some of the crumbs when I am back at my apartment. If not, I guess it’s just an excuse to make another one!

Ingredients (recipe lightly adapted from here except I halved it, cut down the sugar, and increased the lemon zest)
Wet:
1/2 cup of butter or one stick melted (I tend to use just slightly less because in my head I feel healthier — so much for precision with baking)
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs
1 tblspn vanilla
zest of 1 lemon & juice from said lemon (if you want a regular pound cake, simply omit the lemon zest. still delicious!)
1/2 c buttermilk or milk* (to convert milk into buttermilk, simply pour the milk into a cup, measuring bowl, whatever & add a tablespoon of lemon juice. let sit while you are mixing your ingredients)

Dry:
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
pinch of baking soda
smaller pinch of salt (seriously, who is going to measure out 1/8 of a teaspoon. if you do, i applaud you)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a loaf pan.
2. Add sugar to your melted butter. Mix until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and continue mixing until all blended. Add in vanilla.
3. Alternate between adding your buttermilk/milk mixture and dry ingredients until well blended.
4. Pour batter into the loaf pan. If you’re baking without someone you like, be nice and let them like the bowl ;). Let bake for 50-55 mins or until a toothpick easily slides through the middle of the loaf. (Although I am lacking a picture, the loaf should be very slightly browned on the top).
5. Let cool in the loaf pan for 5-10 mins before sliding it out. The sides and bottom will be nicely browned. Cool, slice, enjoy.

Happy Baking!
Dani