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Mama’s Pound Cake

By Paula Deen

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Mama’s Pound Cake Recipe
66 reviews • 4 questions

Difficulty: Easy

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 90 minutes

Servings: 10

Ingredients

  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
  • 5 eggs
  • 3 cups plus more for pan all purpose flour
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
  • 1/2 lb (2 sticks) plus more for pan butter
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 °F.

With a mixer, cream butter and shortening together. To the bowl, add sugar a little at a time. Then, add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition. In another bowl, stir dry ingredients together then add to mixer alternately with milk, starting with the flour and ending with the flour. Mix in vanilla. Pour into a greased and floured tube pan and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

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Reviews (65)Questions (4)

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October 22, 2020
Made this cake at least 10 times with variety of variations within 2 years. I’ve made it as is, with almond extract, as a rum pound cake, Andy favorite as a lemon glazed pound cake. I’ve brought it to parties and everyone loves this recipe. This is probably one of my favorite cakes as well. Simple yet extremely tasty and satisfying dessert.

May 20, 2019
The best pound cake, and I’ve tried many recipes. The secret to success is creaming the butter sugar mixture at least for 5 minutes...set a timer to help. Butter flavor crisco shortening is best, don’t sub out anything for the shortening, it is necessary.

April 05, 2018
I used this recipe back in November for my wedding cake. Pound cake is the only kind of cake I like. It was a 4 layer naked cake with homemade raspberry purée and homemade cream cheese frosting. Everyone loved it. I impressed myself on how well it turned out since I’ve never made a wedding cake before.

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February 26, 2021
Too sweet?

3cups of sugar?  Did anyone find this to be too sweet?



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February 28, 2021
This is actually perfectly fine as written. This has the normal amount of sweetness a pound cake would need. The math that goes into baking (Pastry Arts) for certain types of cakes is going to be slightly adjusted and much different than when you work with Pound Cake. Normally, the old school "Pound Cake" recipe is literally 1lb flour, 1lb butter, 1lb sugar.  This is the standard Metric recipe for the old 1700's English recipe.   Her recipe is actually for a much larger sized cake but, no one would ever complain about more cake, right? :) 

February 28, 2021
I meant type ***non-Metric***

February 26, 2021
Making mamas pound cake. No milk except almond or dry. Which is better?

February 26, 2021

Almond milk can be used 1:1 in place of regular milk when baking!

February 20, 2021
Cake flour

Can this be made with cake flour or does it change how it turns out?


The Deen Team

February 22, 2021

It will change how it turns out. We recommend sticking with all-purpose flour for this recipe!

May 13, 2020
Mamas

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