Boring Loaf cakes no more ...
... revisiting the humble loaf cake
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I don’t know about you but I love a good loaf cake. It’s probably one of the first things I learned how to bake by myself as a child and to this day I like how dependable they are. More often than not they are one bowl affairs that don’t require a stand mixer or other fancy equipment, quick enough to pull off before or after work, easy to transport and they keep well (and, spoiler alert, they also freeze well). I also like how multi-purpose they are. In fact, you could keep a loaf cake on the counter for a few days, cutting yourself a slice for breakfast each day, and, come the weekend, turn the remaining slices into dessert for an impromptu dinner with friends: toasting a few slices of say pound cake in a griddle pan, and serving this with a quick compote using the last of the frozen blueberries at the back of your freezer, a glug of maple syrup and some thyme, and finishing the whole thing with some whipped cream.
But, this wouldn’t be my newsletter if I didn't tell you that loaf cakes can be, well, how best to put this, a veritable snoozefest. But don’t despair - it doesn’t have to be that way! The humble loaf cake lends itself perfectly to switching things up flavour-wise (and even texture-wise) to satisfy even the most demanding tastebuds. So grab yourself a hot beverage of your choice (this is a long one!) and I will show you just how versatile the humble loaf cake really is! I will share lots of ideas for delicious and maybe new-to-you flavours and flavour combinations and some new takes on the old classics like pound cake, lemon drizzle cake, marble loaf cake, banana bread etc. I will also give you some pointers for how you can create your own recipes for delicious loaf cakes that are a little bit unusual by changing just a few ingredients. And last but not least, in the spirit of a previous edition of this newsletter all about making restaurant-worthy desserts at home, I’ll also share a few ideas for turning a simple loaf cake into a stunning dessert.
Pound Cake
Made up of equal amounts (by weight) of flour, sugar, butter and eggs - typically 250g each - the enduring popularity of pound cakes must in part be explained by how easy it is to remember the recipe. And while there is nothing wrong with the classic pound cake I think it’s really fun to switch things up a little bit. And you don’t even necessarily need to start digging around your spice drawer or pantry for some exotic ingredients to add to your classic pound cake recipe - simply playing around with the basic components of a pound cake recipe, i.e. the fat and flour, can already lead to subtly yet noticeably different and delicious results:
The Fat
Brown butter
While pound cakes are traditionally made with plain butter, an easy and delicious switch is to use brown butter instead. How: Use the amount of butter called for in the recipe and weigh it again once browned. Replace the difference between the starting weight and the weight of the brown butter with milk. You should expect to have to add milk equal to around 20pc of the starting weight of your butter - so 50ml in case of 250g of butter). This is meant to ensure you stick to a ratio of fat:water that mimics that of butter (which is roughly 80% fat and 20% water). See here for a primer on how to prepare browned butter.
Ghee
For a more buttery flavour, you could also replace butter with ghee. How: Since Ghee is 99% fat, the same rules as for brown butter apply when replacing butter with Ghee - i.e. you want to replace 4/5th of the butter weight with Ghee and, again, make up the remainder with milk.
Oil (vegetable oil, olive oil, coconut oil etc.)
If you are like many Southern Italians and actually don’t like when things taste “too buttery” (yes, there is such a thing), you could also swap out the butter for oil, e.g. be it a neutral tasting vegetable oil, a nice olive oil (especially good with citrus) or fragrant coconut oil. How: Since oil has a fat percentage close to 100, again you will want to make sure that you replace only about 80% of the butter called for in the recipe with oil and make up the remainder with milk.
Half fat / half dairy
For a lighter take on pound cake that still results in a beautifully velvety crumb that will stay soft and moist for days, you could also replace up to half of the butter with buttermilk, yoghurt, sourcream etc. A handy trick when you realise you don’t have enough butter (or oil) for the recipe and the supermarket is already closed!
Before you start thinking about adding different kinds of flavourings and aromatics to your basic pound cake recipe, you can also play around with what flour you use or even swap part of the flour with some ground nuts or seeds.
The Flour
Different types of flours
Nutty Rye and buttery Kamut are both great options for alternative flours to use for a pound cake given their distinct flavour profiles. Other options include buckwheat or oat flour, masa harina and polenta. However, note that using all glutenfree flour can change the texture of your poundcake and it can turn out to be a bit denser. However, that will not be an issue if you only replace a small part of the flour with glutenfree flour (e.g. 50g out of the total 250g) and which works well for very flavourful glutenfree flours like buckwheat for example.
Wholemeal flour
Using wholemeal flour is another way to boost the flavour of your basic pound cake recipe. However, note that wholemeal flours tend to be thirstier, i.e. they absorb more moisture. You will notice that your cake batter will be thicker than what you are used to. But stirring in 1 to 2 tbsp of milk into the batter before baking will help.
Toasting your flour
One way to further boost the flavour of your pound cake is to toast your flour in a dry frying pan for a few minutes (stirring continuously to ensure even toasting) until nutty and fragrant - then wait for it to cool down again before proceeding with the rest of the recipe. I especially love doing this with masa harina, polenta and oat flour.
Ground nuts and seeds
You could also replace part of the flour with ground nuts or seeds (e.g. walnut, cashew, almond, pecan, hazelnut, black sesame, pistachio, pumpkin, sunflower, for example) or desiccated coconut. Again, doing so can result in a slightly denser texture (but also a bit more bite and a cake that stays fresh for longer).
Beyond playing with the fat and flour in your recipe, you can of course also add additional flavourings and aromatics and here the options are really endless so play around a bit:
Citrus zest
Instead of lemon zest (and juice) try using the zest and juice of mandarines or clementines, oranges (and even bitter oranges!), limes, makrut limes, grapefruit, pomelo etc. How: when a recipe calls for 1 lemon, you can replace that with 2 smaller citrus fruits or ½ of one of the bigger citrus fruits. To maximise flavour extraction, try rubbing the zest into the sugar with your fingertips until the sugar resembles wet sand.
See for example Alice Medrich’s Kamut Pound Cake with Orange Zest, which uses buttery Kamut and orange zest for a subtle but delicious twist on the classical pound cake recipe.
Spices
The options here are seemingly endless but some of my favourite baking spices include cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla, tonka bean, anise seed, mahleb, star anise, chinese five spice powder, advieh, coriander (with citrus) and nutmeg (delicious with coconut). How: different spices vary in strength and there is of course also personal preference so it’s difficult to say how much to use of each one for a single pound cake so you might have to experiment a little bit but a good starting point is to use about 1 tsp of spices like cinnamon, advieh or Chinese five spice powder, 1 tbsp of mahleb, ½ tsp of stronger tasting spices like star anise or nutmeg and maybe ¼ of a grated tonka bean.
Herbs
Fresh or dried bayleaf, powdered fig leaves, thyme, basil are just a few examples.
See for example the Bay Leaf Pound Cake in David Lebovitz’ My Paris Kitchen - a classical pound cake recipe with a couple of twists. It is made with half butter half sour cream and David steeps some bay leaves in melted butter before using that butter for the cake.
Tea (including herbal teas)
Again, the options here are seemingly endless but a few options that I like and that are a little bit more unusual include adding ground chamomile, jasmine, oolong or verveine to your pound cake batter. For something a bit more out of the ordinary, ground lapsang souchong can add a delicious smokey note to your poundcake (something I particularly like with Banana Bread actually but would work well with a chocolate pound cake too I think - imagine a Smokey Lapsang Souchong Chocolate Poundcake with Some Boozy Syrupy Prunes!).
Cocoa powder or Kinako
Use the best quality cocoa you can afford (my favourite is Valrhona) and replace 10 per cent or up to 25 per cent of your flour weight with cocoa powder for a beautifully rich and chocolatey loaf cake. You will also want to add some extra moisture since cocoa powder is thirsty. You can of course use milk but I like adding a shot of espresso instead as I find it’s better at bringing out the chocolate flavour.
Kinako is toasted soybean flour - if you have never had it, that description might not sound all that exciting. But that couldn’t be further from the truth because Kink essentially tastes like powdered peanut butter! Similar to cocoa powder, you can replace up to 25per cent of your flour weight with kinako powder but, again, you will want to add 1-2 tbsp of milk to your batter for some extra moisture.
Matcha, Hojicha
Matcha and Hojicha are both intense in flavour so I suggest replacing no more than 5 per cent of your flour with Matcha or Hojicha to start. To ensure even dispersion, whisk your Matcha or Hojicha into your flour before proceeding with the rest of the recipe.
Syrups
One way to add an interesting twist (both flavour- and texture-wise) is to soak your poundcake with a flavoured syrup - orange blossom and rose water flavoured syrups are obvious choices, so are cinnamon or honey. In terms of quantities, start with a flavoured simple syrup made using 50ml water and 50g sugar and start with a tsp of the orange blossom or rose water, or a single cinnamon stick.
Lemon Drizzle Cake - hold the lemon
Lemon Drizzle Cake is a classic for a reason. I mean who can resist the combination of a sweet and lemony cake drenched in a lemon syrup that is both mouth-puckeringly sour yet also tooth-achingly sweet? But given the wide range of different types of citrus available these days why should lemons have all the fun? And what about other ingredients that are nice and tart?
Other citrus
Instead of lemon zest and juice try using the zest and juice of mandarines or clementines, oranges (and even bitter oranges!), limes, makrut limes, grapefruit, pomelo etc. Or why not try my Preserved Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake? How: when a recipe calls for 1 lemon, you can replace that with 2 smaller citrus fruits or ½ of one of the bigger citrus fruits. To maximise flavour extraction, try rubbing the zest into the sugar with your fingertips until the sugar resembles wet sand before proceeding with the rest of the recipe.
Other tart ingredients beyond citrus
What makes citrus fruits so unique is that both their zest and juice are highly aromatic and in a Lemon Drizzle Cake it’s the lemon zest that gives the cake itself such a deeply fragrant flavour with the lemon drizzle adding a further flavour dimension. But that doesn’t mean you can only make Drizzle Cakes with citrus fruits. In fact, there are plenty of other tart ingredients that would no doubt make a delicious syrup poured over a simple pound cake. In fact, I love making a Sumac Drizzle Cake and covering the cake in a beautiful blush pink and mottled Sumac glaze. Other candidates for drizzle cake I would happily explore include Hibiscus, Tamarind, Verjus, Sea Buckthorn and Passion Fruit.
Marble Loaf Cake but not as you know it
My brother’s birthday is in February and since my parents are against buying out-of-season fruits, there weren’t all that many options for his birthday cake. So year in year out he would get a humble marble loaf cake as his birthday cake. Executed well (and using good quality cocoa powder in particular - I am partial to Valrhona), a marble loaf cake can be a thing of beauty. But as cakes go, it is maybe not the most exciting option. But, there is also nothing to say you need to limit yourself to the traditional combination of half plain cake batter and half chocolate batter. Here are a few more ideas:
Chocolate Orange Marble Loaf Cake
Chocolate and Orange is a classical flavour combination for a reason. So it was about time the two met in Marble Loaf Cake form! How: once you have divided your Marble Loaf Cake batter and stirred cocoa powder into one half of it, simply stir the zest of 1 orange into the other half.
Matcha or Hojicha Marble Loaf Cake
Who is to say that a Marble Loaf Cake has to be made with cocoa powder? Noone if you ask me! So next time, why not try something a little different and instead of cocoa powder stir some Matcha or Hojicha into half your cake batter?
You can of course also try and Marble-ify other cakes - as mentioned below, you could easily turn your Banana Bread into a Marble Banana Bread. Similarly, if you have a good recipe for a Black Sesame Loaf Cake (this is the one I like) you could Marble-ify that recipe by using half white sesame seeds and half black sesame seeds!
Banana Bread - No need to go all bananas
Another classic loaf cake, thanks to the pandemic many of us have probably had our lifetime share of banana bread. But then again, given how delicious banana bread is plus the fact that it is seemingly impossible to buy just the right number of bananas at the right stage of ripeness for any given household, there will be overripe bananas crying out to be turned into banana bread for many years to come.
But I will forgive you if you are a little over the bog standard banana bread and are looking for something a little more interesting - I have you covered:
Banana Marble Loaf Cake
Since we were just talking about Marble Cake, an easy way to switch things up a little bit is to treat your banana bread like a Marble Cake and add cocoa powder to half the batter before swirling the two together in your cake pan for that dramatic look (and delicious flavour!).
Browned Butter Banana Bread
A simple way to give your Banana Bread some extra depth of flavour and almost butterscotch like notes is to use browned butter instead of plain butter. As mentioned above, doing so will require you to replace ca. 20% of the original butter weight with another liquid like milk to make up for the loss of water when making browned butter.
Miso Banana Bread
For a bit of a savoury twist, you could also make a Miso Banana Bread. How: stir 3 tbsp of light (shiro) Miso into your mashed bananas before proceeding with the rest of the recipe. I imagine this would go particularly well toasted and enjoyed alongside some bacon rashers and a fried egg or two.
Smokey Banana Bread
This Smokey Banana Bread is one of my favourite twists on classical banana bread. It gets its wonderful flavour from the addition of some Lapsang Souchong Tea to the batter. The end result is a delicately smokey flavour making this version of banana bread work equally well as a sweet treat or to go alongside savoury dishes. In fact, for my next brunch I am planning to serve slices of this Smokey Banana Bread fried in a griddle plan alongside some crispy bacon rashers, some fried eggs and maybe a sea salt and date or burnt honey butter.
Banana Bread - no banana in sight
If you are really sick of banana bread you could of course also make Banana Bread without bananas. Sure, it would then no longer be Banana Bread. But that is fine. Once you have found your perfect Banana Bread recipe, you can use it as a jumping off point to make other wonderfully moist loaf cakes - e.g. using Pumpkin or Squash Puree, or roasted sweet potato etc.
How to turn your pound cake into dessert - some ideas:
Toasted Masa Harina Pound Cake + Blueberry and Thyme Compote + Whipped Crème Fraiche
Buckwheat Pound Cake + Sake Syrup + Sake Poached Pears + Sake Zabaglione
Sumac Drizzle Cake + Sumac Macerated Strawberries + Cardamom Whipped Labneh + Chopped Pistachios
A Trifle of Sorts: Toasted Rice Blancmanger + Toasted Cubes of Advieh Pound Cake + Raspberry Rose Compote + Fresh Raspberries
Alice Medrich’s Kamut Orange Pound Cake Crêpe Suzette style: an Orange Caramel Sauce + Fresh Orange Segments + Orange Zest + Whipped Crème Fraiche
Chocolate Orange Marble Cake + Candied Cocoa Nibs + Candied Kumquats + Whipped Crème Fraiche
Bay Leaf Pound Cake + Apples Caramelised in Butter + Bay Leaf Pouring Custard
Toasted Banana Bread + Miso Caramelised Banana Slices + Vanilla Ice Cream
What is your favourite loaf cake? And does it involve playing with unusual flours, ground nuts or different spices? If so, let me know in the comments!
