Redfield Recipes: Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake

Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake

Lucille Hansen's cake, from Rosie

3	cups	flour
¹/₂	tsp	baking powder
¹/₂	tsp	baking soda
¹/₂	tsp	salt
1	cup	softened butter
1²/₃	cups	sugar
2	eggs, room temperature
¹/₂	tsp	vanilla
1¹/₃	Tb	grated orange rind
1¹/₂	cups	buttermilk or sour milk

Sift dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) and set aside.

Cream the butter, then add the sugar and cream until soft and fluffy (easier with a mixer). Whisk the eggs and add to the butter mixture. When light and fluffy, add the vanilla and orange rind.

Beat in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.

Pour batter into greased and floured loaf pan. Bake at 350°F until done (probably about an hour). Glaze with Orange Glaze.

The original recipe (from Lucille Hansen of Flanagan Illinois, who won a prize for it at the Illinois State Fair) multiplies this version by 1¹/₂ and bakes it in a 10" tube pan. To bake her version, cover it loosely with foil and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and continue baking for another 1¹/₄ to 1¹/₂ hours or until done.

Signe: My mother sent me this cake when I was at boarding school. It was packed in a cardboard box pieced together out of cut-to-fit fragments around a wrapping of bubble wrap, and was the most intact baked good I have ever received. My friends and I demolished it that afternoon. It was moist and tender and perfect.