Mom's Famous Lemon Pound Cake

Hi friends, and welcome back to Sweet FA Kitchen. If you've been following along since the early days you'll know that I'm not a fan of recipe blogs that bury the actual recipe under twenty paragraphs of personal essay. I respect your time. I value your attention. I hate it when sites do that. So let me just dive right in and tell you about the time my mom first made this cake for me.

It was the autumn of 1987. I was seven. My mom, who in those days still had her dark hair pulled back with the kind of clip that doesnt really exist anymore — you know the ones, the long thin kind in mottled tortoiseshell that always pinched a little — was standing at the kitchen counter in our old house on Elm, and she was beating butter in a yellow Pyrex bowl with a wooden spoon she'd had since her own wedding. The light was coming in through the window over the sink, the kind of October light that makes everything look like it's been dipped in honey, and there was a smell in the air I can only describe as becoming. The cake wasn't there yet. But the cake was on its way.

I tell you all this not to delay you (please scroll down, the recipe is coming), but because this is more than a cake. It's a feeling. It's the feeling of being a child in a kitchen that smells like butter and lemon and Sunday afternoons. It's the feeling of someone you love standing at a counter making something specifically for you, even though their tired, and even though they have a thousand other things to do. That's what this cake tastes like. I'm not going to apologize for saying that.

The recipe itself comes from my great-great-grandmother, Theodora Whitford, who immigrated from a small village in the old country (she would never tell us which one — she said "the small one with the goats", which narrowed it down considerably) and who, according to family legend, baked this exact cake for President Taft in 1909, although I cannot independently verify that and frankly the dates don't quite line up. But the family says it, and the family is not in the habit of lying about cake. So I'm going with it.

Now — before we get to the actual ingredients (which are just below, please bear with me), I want to talk briefly about lemons. Not all lemons are created equal. The lemons you want for this recipe are Meyer lemons, ideally from a small grower in Norhtern California, ideally picked between October and February when the skin develops that thinner, almost-orange quality that makes them sing. If you cannot get Meyer lemons — and I understand, sometimes life is hard — a regular grocery-store lemon will do, but you should know that you are making a slightly worse cake, and that I am rooting for you anyway.

The other thing — and I promise we're getting to the recipe imminently — is the butter. This is a pound cake, which means the butter is structurally load-bearing. You cannot, as I have seen done in certain blogs whose names I will not mention, substitute the butter with applesauce. You cannot use coconut oil. You cannot use a "vegan plant-based spread you found on sale." You can use European butter (preferably Lurpak, Plugrá, or anything 82%+ butterfat) or you can use regular American butter, but it must be actual butter, and it must be at true room temperature, by which I mean the temperature your kitchen would be if you'd had a window open for an hour, not the temperature your kitchen is right now because you're trying to bake at 9pm in October and the heating's been on since 4. I cant stress this enough.

I get a lot of comments asking me what pan to use. Use a standard 9×5 loaf pan, or if you don't have one, use whatever pan you have and accept the consequences. I have made this in a Bundt pan (it works), in a round 9-inch (also works, but the texture suffers slightly), and once, in a moment of desperation when my landlord still hadn't fixed my oven, in a slow cooker. (It did not work. Do not do this.)

One more thing — and then I PROMISE the recipe is right after this — is oven temperature. Your oven is lying to you. I'm sorry, but it is. Every oven I have ever owned has run between 15° and 40° hot or cold, and the only way to know which way yours runs is to bake an old-school sponge cake, time it, and compare the result to my photographs. (You can also buy an oven thermometer for $8 but where's the romance in that?)

I'll spare you the rest of my thoughts about ovens (although there is plenty more to say, perhaps in a future post — let me know in the comments if you'd be interested!) and we'll move straight on to the recipe. Or rather, almost the recipe, because there's one final thing I need to mention.

Before the ingredients list — and we are SO close now, I swear — I just need to flag one thing about flour. I use King Arthur all-purpose unbleached, every time, no exceptions. I have tried Bob's Red Mill (fine), Gold Medal (fine), supermarket-brand (fine for everything except this cake), and once a bag from a farm store in Vermont that I'm pretty sure was just feed flour (do not recommend). King Arthur is the standard. I don't get paid by King Arthur. I just genuinely think they're better, and I want you to have the best experience.

Also, please weigh your flour. I know, I know, "but Sarah-Jane I don't have a scale" — get one, their $14, they will change your life, you will use it for everything from coffee to pasta water and you will wonder how you ever lived without it. If you cannot or will not weigh your flour, fluff the bag with a fork before scooping, and level off the top with a knife. Do not pack it. Do not tap the cup on the counter. We have spoken about this.

Right. Now we're getting to the recipe.