Metrology-Themed Cake

As promised, I made a metrology-themed cake. Like I predicted, I didn't get a chance to make it until the weekend. Since the World Metrology Day theme this year was "Measurements in Commerce," it seemed most appropriate to make a pound cake.

Pound cakes are so named because originally they were made with a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Those proportions in a cake today would be considered too dry, so today's pound cakes are a little different than that. But one thing that makes a pound cake a pound cake is the fact that the only leavening in it is the air that's whipped into it while mixing it up.

Once I'd settled on that, I needed to pick a recipe. I searched online for pound cake recipes, and soon came across one that claimed to be Elvis Presley's Favorite Pound Cake. What's not to like about that? I had to make it!

Here are the main ingredients:

In case you can't tell, this recipe calls for two sticks of butter, seven eggs, and three cups each of flour and sugar. Also, it has you sift the cake flour three times, to maximize the fluffiness, I suppose.

I had a baking helper:

He helped to remove the wrappers from the butter and put the sticks of butter in the mixing bowl so that we could cream the butter and sugar:

and add the eggs, one at a time. This is the only "action shot" I was able to get of my assistant -- he's learned that when the camera comes out, it's time to say "cheese!!!"

Here's the final batter, after I'd beat it on medium-high speed for 5 minutes, just before I scraped it into the pan:

I used Pam spray for baking rather than buttering and flouring the pan, because it works way better than my best buttering and flouring. Here's the cake ready to go into the oven:
The cake goes into a cold oven (no preheating). Unfortunately my oven temperature is not very accurate or reliable, so my cake ended up getting a little overdone. I had to cut off the top, because it was burned.

And here is the final product, cooling on the rack:

I decided that it would be really delicious with fresh, local strawberries from the farmer's market (which are so much more flavorful than anything shipped thousands of miles to your grocery store):

and whipped cream, whipped in the mixing bowl I stuck in the freezer after I'd finished washing the remaining cake batter out of it:



I bet you wish you could try a piece:
It was really good! Elvis knew what he was talking about!