Good Eats: Vanilla pound cake

Scott's not your sheet-cake-and-frosting birthday cake kind of guy. Instead of the usual chocolate groom's cake, he had cheesecake. There was much more of my cake leftover than his, which is OK with me because I love wedding cake and would happily eat the rest myself (maybe that's where most of my post-wedding weight came from).

So usually for his birthday I get him a cheesecake from a local bakery. This time, however, I decided I would try my hand at his other favorite cake — pound cake. I Googled recipes until I found this one by Martha Stewart and figured Martha could do no wrong and that her recipe would be a winner. While Scott was in a meeting with his class group members, I whipped up this pretty simple pound cake.

Ingredients:
1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

(My note: She didn't specify that the butter be softened, but I let it sit out and get slightly room temperature anyway.)

Preheat the oven to 325° and grease your 9x5 loaf pan. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl and set aside.

I got to flex my Kitchen Aid mixer muscles again for this cake, no longer with any fear that it is above me. Take that, arrogant kitchen appliance! Beat the butter until fluffy. "Fluffy" is a weird term to me because I feel like it's slightly relative. So, I whipped it until I thought it looked fluffy and took it two minutes further, just because I was unsure. What's the worst that could happen? Too fluffy? Fuzzy perhaps?

Once fluffy, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. The BFC (Barefoot Contessa) would be so proud of me because I cracked the eggs in a little bowl before adding them to the mix. I didn't want to ruin my fluffy butter. It was a good thing, too, as it enabled me to fish out some shell here and there.

After the eggs, add the vanilla and give it a stir. I took the bowl off the mixer at this point since I didn't want flour flying. Add in the flour mixture a cup at a time, mixing until incorporated each time, careful not to over mix. The pour into the pan.

Remember to place your loaf pan on a cookie sheet. I almost forgot one time and would've had all kinds of pumpkin bread mess in the oven if I had. Lick the spatula after you've spread the batter in the pan. The batter tastes really good, which is a good indication the cake will too, in my experience at least.

Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes to an hour and a half, depending. I did the full hour and 30 and kind of over did it, so I'll probably cut it to an hour 20 minutes next time.

While Martha says to let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before popping it out of there, I like to wait a little longer. One time, making another pound cake, I didn't let it cool long enough, and it fell apart. It still tasted good but looked like a gorilla had gone after it. Neither Martha nor the BFC would approve of that.