Buttermilk Pound Cake (Old-Fashioned)

The original lovely, rich pound of butter, pound of flour, pound of eggs and pound of sugar cake using buttermilk, made with love by our Grannies!

3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 lb butter
1 lb sugar
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
½ tsp. fine sea salt
½ cup buttermilk

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar. I use a large spoon for this. Next I add the butter. My grandmother would melt the butter in a pan over slow heat-make it blend easier. You can do this or just let the butter soften at room temperature. Add the eggs, whole.

At this point I break out my mixer and begin mixing on slow. I slowly add my buttermilk, and then the vanilla extract. After it is thoroughly stirred, I turn the mixer up-medium for a few minutes, and then finally on high. If the mixture is a little thick I add just a touch more buttermilk. If you don't mix things thoroughly you will have lumps that will form air bubbles in your mixture and leave holes in your finished cake.

It was always a matter of pride not-have these air pocket holes in our cakes so we always made sure we got all of the lumps. In the pre-electric-mixer day that involved a lot of whipping the cake by hand. We usually didn't have a hand cranked mixer that worked well, so this involved a large mixing spoon-whip it. Some old timers even counted the number of times they whipped the mixture — sort of made it fun and you didn't notice your arm tiring.

Preheat the over-325°F (160°C).

Take your standard tube cake pan and oil it with butter. Then lightly flour the oiled pan. Shake the excess flour from the pan.

Pour the mix in, bake the cake for about 1 hour and twenty minutes. Keep looking at how your cake is doing through the oven door but avoid opening the door too much while it is cooking as I have seen this, or jarring a cake, cause it-collapse. When you think it is done, do the toothpick test. Stick a wooden toothpick into one of the thickest parts of the cake. If it's dry when you pull it our, the cake is done.

Allow the cake-cool 15-20 minutes in the pan. Then gently remove it, and stick it on your favourite decorative cake plate.