Sour Cream Pound Cake

I recently needed a simple and quick dessert to serve to some family, and since it was going to be an afternoon (sort of a tea-time event) visit, this pound cake came to mind. I'd been wanting to try it out since seeing the recipe in The Savannah Cookbook a while back.

The beautiful thing about this pound cake is how delicious it is, despite having no frills or extra flavoring. If you really need to add something, some fresh fruit, particularly strawberries, would be an excellent accompaniment.

Unfortunately, I didn't think about taking any photographs of the process until after the fact, but here's the basic rundown:

• In a large mixing bowl, cream together 2 sticks of soft butter and 3 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.
• While that's happening, sift together 3 cups of all-purpose flour and 1/8 teaspoon of salt.
• Once the butter and sugar are ready, mix in 6 eggs, one at a time, then add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
• In several additions (I think I did three), carefully add the flour mixture and beat until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.
• Add 1 cup of sour cream and  mix until the whole thing is nice and smooth.
• Butter and flour a tube cake pan or bundt pan, or use a cake release spray like Wilton Bake Easy.
• Evenly pour the batter into the prepared pan, run a butter knife through to release large air pockets, and give it a couple taps on the countertop.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Let cool 10-15 minutes in the pan, then invert onto a cake plate and allow to continue cooling (though it's delicious served warm). If desired, invert the cake a second time so the crusty top is facing up.

That's it!

Cherry Berry Cobbler for the 4th of July

(Raise.com is a platform to buy and sell gift cards. Their July 4 Fun campaign is intended to hear about everyone's holiday weekend, and share party and recipe ideas. For more creative July 4th recipe ideas, take a peek at the  "July 4th Fun" campaign with Raise.com, which features a lot of beautiful recipes for this holiday and a place where you can buy and sell gift cards that can help you save money before you even hit the stores!)

It never quite feels like summer has arrived until the 4th of July rolls around. Something about the parades, fireworks, patriotic shindigs, barbecues, and general merriment just makes the season, for lack of a better word, start.

Friends of ours hosted a 4th of July party (actually, as they call it, a 4th of Ju-Luau party, with a Hawaiian theme), and my contribution to the festivities was a cherry berry cobbler - sort of a variation on my mixed berry pie, in cobbler form, with a tweak or two.

Cobblers, as it turns out, are considered to be a pretty American dessert. Early European settlers used whatever ingredients were at hand in an attempt to make some of the familiar dishes from their homelands, and as such there are as many variations on cobblers as there were variations on settlers. In general, the requirements are some kind of fruit filling topped with some kind of crust, either a crumbly crust, a biscuity crust, or some combination thereof. Once upon a time, cobblers were served as main dishes for breakfast, or a first course for other meals. Eventually, they were relegated to the dessert category, and we sure do still love them!

This recipe was particularly nice to put together, as I still had a lot of cherries, black raspberries, and blueberries frozen from last summer, and this allowed me to make some room in the freezer.

For more great American-themed recipes and party ideas, check out Raise.com's 4th of July Fun blog post!

Seriously Old-Fashioned Recipes

I haven't been doing much cooking this week - okay, let's be honest, I've done no cooking this week - due to the heatwave the northeast (and apparently the rest of the United States) has been experiencing.  When it's 95+ degrees out, and your house is not equipped with any sort of air conditioning, firing up the oven is the very last thing you want to do.

But just because it's not physically comfortable enough to cook doesn't mean you can't look at recipes.

I love looking at recipes.

I particularly like looking at old-fashioned recipes.  And I'm not talking about stuff from the 1950s.  I mean historical recipes.  In April, I went to a seminar about the War of 1812 and was thisclose to purchasing a cookbook with recipes dating from the early 1800s.  You know, back when recipes were called "receipts".

As I was attempting to stay cool yesterday, I was poking around the internet and stumbled across a website that I'm dying to dive into:  The Civil War Interactive Cookbook.  Okay, I didn't stumble.  I deliberately did a Google search for Civil War era recipes.

I should probably inform all of you that, aside from my love of cooking and baking, I am a ridiculous history geek.  And the Civil War is kind of my historical area of expertise, if amateur study can lead to any sort of expertise.

I literally went "OOOOOOO" when I clicked on the link.

Now, aside from the various recipes out there for military hardtack, there isn't much in the way of recipes Civil War era soldiers would cook.  All of these recipes are from the home front.  What's really cool is that the editors of the website include some explanations about what some of the historical ingredients are (for example, crushed loaf sugar is nothing more than today's granulated sugar), and they also give sources for the recipes too.

My sweet tooth must be acting up this week because I spent the majority of my time perusing the sections regarding baked goods.  As soon as this heat wave lets up, I might have to try to whip up some authentic Boston creme cakes.

It may take some financial planning, however, before attempting one of the sponge cake recipes calling for 15 eggs.  (And you thought the 12-layer cake called for an obscene amount of eggs!)