Justification!

It was another delicious day in the kitchen. Refusing to give up on the Williams-Sonoma Baking Cookbook, I tried their recipe for Almond Pound Cake, and it came out perfect! I  will say this, though: almond extract is strong. (I'd never used it before.) So here it is:

1 cup (4.5 oz/140 g) slivered blanched almonds
1 cup (8 oz/250 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups (1 lb/500 g) granulated sugar
6 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups (15 oz/470 g) flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (8 oz/250 g) sour cream
1/2 cup (2 oz/60 g) sliced (flaked) almonds
powdered sugar for dusting

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter a 10-inch Bundt pan or two 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch loaf pans. Sprinkle with flour and tap out the excess. In a food processor, process the slivered almonds until finely ground.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat together the butter and granulated sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla and almond extracts. In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in 2 additions, alternating with the sour cream and beating on low speed after each addition until smooth. Stir in the ground almonds. Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan(s). If using loaf pans, sprinkle evenly with the sliced almonds.

3. Bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 1-1.25 hours. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto the rack and lift off the pan. Let the cake cool completely. Dust the top with powdered sugar shaken through a sieve, cut into slices, and serve.

You may have noticed something new in today's post. That's right, kids, I included weight measurements! (At least where they were provided to me by the handy dandy cookbook.) That's because, as I reminded myself/was reminded by running out of sour cream before I should have, baking is actually best done using weight measurements rather than traditional cups. This means, if you don't have one already, you should buy a food scale. Trust me, you won't regret it.

The only modification I made to this recipe is that I ground the sliced almonds I already had rather than buying a new bag of slivered almonds that I wouldn't use all of. I figured since they were ground that it wouldn't make a difference. And, since the recipe worked so well, I guess I was right. I also made sure the eggs were room temperature when I added them, as suggested/recommended by the Pastry Chef Online.

As with every other cake I've made in a Bundt pan, the top (which became the bottom) domed. I suppose I could've trimmed it and made it even, but that seemed like a waste of perfectly good cake. So I left it domed and just dusted and sliced it.

Doming just makes the slices bigger! And everyone likes bigger slices!

I will definitely be using this recipe again. I'll probably try it in the loaf pans at some point so it seems more like a traditional pound cake, but I'm content to keep using a Bundt pan for a while. Bundt cakes just look so nice, after all!

Pretty, right?