It's 5:00 somewhere! This Brown Sugar Bourbon Pound Cake has become one of our favorite pound cakes and I wish I had more chances to make it. If your are baking for a crowd, particularly one that appreciates bourbon, it's a good choice. The brown sugar and bourbon flavor makes it feel like the holiday season.
White Lily Brown Sugar Bourbon Pound Cake
In the past I made this with White Lily brand flour and wrote about my difficulties finding it at a local grocery store. Now I live in North Carolina and you can buy it at the 7-11. Just kidding. But every grocery store has it because it's a soft flour perfect for biscuits and pound cake, yet it is not cake flour. You can order it here or just use the same weight of bleached all-purpose. Unbleached is fine too.
Greasing and Flouring a Bundt Pan
In my old photo, you can see the little gash on the side of the pound cake where some cake stuck to the pan. Since then I've become much better at getting pound cakes and tube cakes out of pans, and the secret it a lot of shortening. Shortening cost more these days, but it's worth keeping a bit tub of any brand around especially for greasing. It doesn't burn like butter and doesn't require softening, so you can use it right away.
To grease a pan with shortening, put a small zipper bag around your fingers, dip it into the shortening, then rub a generous coat all over the pan. If you don't have a zipper bag, use a paper towel. If convenient, get in the little crevices with a pastry brush. Sprinkle flour in the pan, hold it over the sink and tap to coat with flour.
More Pound Cake Tips
There are so many tips out there for perfecting pound cake. The ones I have found most helpful are 1. Bring all ingredients to room temperature. 2. Weigh your eggs. The weights of eggs vary. I recently bought some large eggs that weighed the same as jumbo size, so 63 vs. about 53. With 10 grams of difference in weight and 5 eggs, that's a whole extra egg. For this cake you'll want to use somewhere between 230 and 250 grams of eggs. You can add the eggs one at a time or whisk them in a bowl and drizzle them in slowly. 3. Don't beat the batter on high speed after adding eggs. You can use high speed to beat the butter and sugar, but reduce speed to medium when adding the eggs to avoid gluey streaks.
Recipe
Brown Sugar Bourbon Pound Cake
Ingredients
- shortening for greasing pan
- 3 cups all purpose flour or White Lily or sifted AP (380 grams)
- ¾ teaspoon salt 7.5 ml
- ½ teaspoon baking powder 2.5 ml
- ½ teaspoon baking soda 2.5 ml
- ¾ cup whole milk milk 180 ml
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 10 ml
- 4 tablespoons bourbon 60 ml
- 1 ½ cups dark brown sugar packed (298 grams)
- ½ cup granulated sugar (99 grams)
- 2 sticks butter, unsalted or salted okay softened (230 grams)
- 5 large eggs, bring to room temperature (230 to 250 grams)
Glaze:
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar 66 grams
- 2 tablespoons orange juice 30 ml
- 2 tablespoons bourbon 30 ml
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 C). Grease a 12-cup capacity Bundt pan with shortening and dust with flour.
- In one bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
- In a measuring cup, combine milk, vanilla and Bourbon.
- In a mixing bowl, using high speed of an electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars until creamy. Reduce speed to medium. Add eggs one at a time, beating 30 seconds after each eggs.
- With a mixing spoon or lowest speed of mixer, add flour mixture and milk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour. When fully mixed, pour into pan.
- Place on center rack and bake for 60 to 80 minutes. The original recipe recipe said 80 minutes, but I used a dark pan and my cake was done in 60 minutes.
- Cool cake in pan for about 10 minutes, the carefully invert. Mix all glaze ingredients together. Using a pastry brush, brush all over cake.
Anna says
Oh, one more thing. The recipe didn't say to do it and it's not necessary, but before I inverted the cake I poked some holes in it and drizzled about a tablespoon of straight bourbon over/into the upside down cake.
Anna says
Hi T.,
I know what you mean. Why eat a Bourbon cake if you can't taste the booze? This cake is pretty strong and in a good way.
T. Martin says
Looks really good Anna... Does it have a distinct bourbon flavor? I prefer when the flavor is strong. Will have to try my hand at this one later this week as I have some bourbon to use up.
Emiline says
I love the beauty of a good-looking bundt cake.
The title of this cake reminds of this blog:
http://fiveoclockshakes.blogspot.com/
Ha ha. Happy New Year!!!
Tracy says
Happy new year, Anna!
Your cake looks delicious!
AmyS says
I just discovered your site on Friday and I am crazy about it! I made your Can't Stop cookies yesterday, and everyone (and their friends) loves them. I wanted to thank you for including metric measurements - it makes my baking life alot easier. 🙂
Anna says
Sandra, the big screen is awesome. I wonder how long it will take for me to smear it up?
Megan, my next door neighbor/friend is quite used to getting cakes with big chunks taken out. The gift of a whole cake almost made her teary-eyed. Okay, so not teary-eyed, but she was surprised. Then she promised she'd bring me some....but I haven't heard from her yet and am wondering how long I should wait before calling. Oh, I know.....I am so tacky....
Thanks Lara! Happy New Year to you!
Lara says
That looks beautiful...not to mention delicious!
Happy New Year!
megan says
Your cake looks wonderful. My problem would be the giving away part. Somehow a cake with a piece missing just don't look as nice.
Happy New Year!!
Sandra says
Love the pictures with the new camera. I have Canon PowerShot SD630 and I love it!! Great little camera with a BIG screen!!
Anna says
Claire, you are such a Southern gal 😉
Carole, I think you will have a lot of fun with the White Lily. It's great in cakes and perfect for biscuits. White Lily has a lot of recipes on their web site, so if you take a recipe from there, just use those measurements (obviously). For recipes calling for all purpose, I usually weigh out 4.5 oz White Lily per 1 cup all purpose called for. Reason being, White Lily weighs a bit less than all purpose. If you don't have a scale, White Lily says that for every 1 cup all purpose, you should use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons White Lily.
carole says
I just ordered 2 5# bags of White Lily. I have never used it before.
Claire says
I use White LIly for everything. It sometimes goes on sale around here for $1 a bag. I pick up several bags when that happens. It really does make a difference in cookies and bisuits.
Anna says
Hi Michelle,
Let's hope so! I have a feeling it is going to be great. It's an old Good Housekeeping recipe and theirs are usually perfect. Plus, I made it slowly and carefully with room temperature ingredients.
Therese, Happy New Year to You!
I'm too addicted to blogging...and the Internet, frankly. If I stopped blogging, I'd just go cause trouble somewhere else ;). The Bourbon I used is called Woodford Reserve. It's a reasonably priced award winning whiskey. I actually bought Todd a bottle for Christmas and he's not thrilled with me for putting it a cake ;).
http://www.woodfordreserve.com/age.aspx
Therese says
Hello LOVELY cake!!!
Bourbon....hmmm. Is there a particular brand that you used for this cake? I have the White Lily flour...so I need to get the bourbon. This would be good to take to my New Years shin dig.
This looks good!! No...great!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Here's to you and your blog and to more baking for 2008!! Keep this blog!
I was ready to start a peaceful march to protest if you decided not to blog anymore! Glad that doesn't have to be done!! WHEW!!
Michelle says
Wow. I'm sure that tastes as amazing as it looks!!