Eat & Drink

Bake It Better: Perfect your pound cake with hot, melted butter and food processor

By America’s Test Kitchen
1. Grease and flour the pan: A dusting of flour helps the pound cake batter climb the sides of the pan evenly and prevents the edges from forming a hard, crusty lip.
1. Grease and flour the pan: A dusting of flour helps the pound cake batter climb the sides of the pan evenly and prevents the edges from forming a hard, crusty lip. Daniel J. van Ackere Daniel J. van Ackere

Most classic pound cake recipes we researched use a fussy mixing method in which all the ingredients need to be at the same temperature. The result if your temperatures are off? A disastrous-looking curdled batter that can’t be saved.

Trying everything we could think of, we finally found the answers to our batter problems: hot, melted (rather than softened) butter and the food processor. The fast-moving blade of the processor plus the hot butter emulsifies the liquid ingredients quickly before they have a chance to curdle — and ruin our dessert in the process.

To get the recipe for Easy Pound Cake from America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, go to bit.ly/ctpoundcake. The link will expire in 1 week.

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Bake It Better: Perfect your pound cake with hot, melted butter and food processor."

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