Dora Charles’s Lost-and-Found Lemon Poundcake

Name: Dora Charles’s Lost-and-Found Lemon Poundcake
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 16 to 20 servings
Cuisine: southern
Ingredients: Baking spray; 1 pound/455 grams good-quality butter; 1 pound/460 grams confectioners’ sugar (4 cups); 1 cup sour cream; 2 tablespoons vanilla extract; 1 tablespoon lemon extract, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus the finely grated zest of one lemon; 3 cups/360 grams Swans Down or other cake flour; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 8 large eggs, separated while cold, then brought to room temperature; Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Recipe from Dora Charles

Adapted by Kim Severson

Updated June 8, 2020

Dora Charles’s Lost-and-Found Lemon Poundcake — Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

Total Time: 1½ hours
Rating: 4(450)
Comments: Read comments

The South has about as many poundcake recipes as there are grandmothers. This one produces a higher, lighter cake than many recipes. It came from Dora Charles’s aunt Laura Daniels, who got it from a nursing-home patient she was working with in the 1970s. The patient, Mary Martin, mailed it to her long after she left the nursing home, but because of a stroke, her handwriting was shaky. Ms. Charles found the recipe and deciphered it, and included it in her cookbook "A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen." You can use lemon juice and zest instead of lemon flavoring, which the original recipe called for, or increase the vanilla by a teaspoon if you are leaving out the lemon altogether. The cake, which is a perfect base for peaches and whipped cream or another fruit topping, gets better after a couple of days and will be good for a week if you keep it well wrapped. It freezes well, too. —Kim Severson

Featured in: Dora Charles Moves On From Paula Deen, and Makes It All About the Seasoning

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Ingredients

Yield:16 to 20 servings

Baking spray
1pound/455 grams good-quality butter
1pound/460 grams confectioners’ sugar (4 cups)
1cup sour cream
2tablespoons vanilla extract
1tablespoon lemon extract, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus the finely grated zest of one lemon
3cups/360 grams Swans Down or other cake flour
½teaspoon baking soda
8large eggs, separated while cold, then brought to room temperature
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Ingredient Substitution Guide

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Preparation

Step 1
Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Generously spray a heavy 10-inch Bundt or straight-sided angel food cake pan with baking spray.
Step 2
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter on medium speed until light and fluffy. Slowly add confectioners’ sugar and beat for several minutes, until the mixture is satiny. Add sour cream, vanilla and lemon flavoring and mix well.
Step 3
Sift the flour and baking soda. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well. Mix in half the egg yolks, followed by another cup of flour, then the remaining yolks and finally the rest of the flour. Do not overmix or the cake will be tough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and do the final mixing by hand.
Step 4
In a large bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently add the whites to the batter, folding them in with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula and barely mixing everything together.
Step 5
Scrape the batter evenly into the pan, rotating it as you go and twisting it to level the batter. Rap the pan sharply on the countertop about 30 times, rotating the pan slightly each time, to eliminate any air pockets.
Step 6
Bake for 30 minutes. If the cake is getting too brown on top, turn the oven down to 300 degrees, then test again in 15 minutes. The cake is done when the top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes to 1 hour in all. Be careful to not underbake.
Step 7
Cool on a rack until the pan is easily handled. Run a knife around the rim and center tube and invert the cake onto the rack to cool completely. Transfer the cake to a serving plate or a cake stand. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

Ratings

4 out of 5

450 user ratings

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Comments

Kim Severson7 years ago

We cleaned up the mistake in the gram conversion. Apologies all around. And this is a very airy cake, as pound cakes go. Folding in the egg whites, souffle-style, is what gives it much its height. I agree that lemon extract would make it more flavorful, but I also made it with double the vanilla and no lemon, which was great. Thanks for trying it and keep the notes coming.

Maxine7 years ago

If you only have one bowl for your mixer, beat the egg whites first, with a little salt, cream of tartar, or vinegar, then dump them in another bowl while you mix the cake batter.

Susan Jamieson-McLarnon7 years ago

A round of applause for giving the weight of ingredients in your recipes- so much more accurate (no matter where you are cooking! Now, if you'd just like to add the internal temperature required to be "done."

Mandi7 months ago

Moist and heavy, but not too heavy. It’s really good, but not the lemon flavor I was hoping for. It’s just barely a hint, and my teen said he couldn’t taste lemon at all. I did use the lemon zest and lemon juice, not the other option in the recipe. I’m not sure how many cups my Bundt pan is, but it’s the one I always use, and it overflowed a little, while baking. Maybe mine is a 9 cup? Will still be looking for a great lemon pound cake.

New Haven, Connecticut2 years ago

This is a very large and rich cake! Delicious. I made it as directed except for extra lemon and granulated sugar for powdered which I did not have on hand. A bit time consuming, as anticipated but familiar steps. Unfortunately It overflowed my pan and now my house smells likes a bakery fire and I am checking with the Google about how to clean oven floors. The cake is very moist. I let it bake for about an hour and a half but it still has a pudding-like consistency. It would be great toasted.

ST2 years ago

An excellent cake but more like a hybrid of pound and chiffon.

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