Cardamom Vanilla Pound Cake

Finally the finished product that I've been promising to post.  The Cardamom Vanilla Pound Cake that came along with part one of the spice project my friends Linda and Lilly are doing this year.  I have part two waiting to be posted, but I didn't want to do that until I got these pictures up.

So, back on January 6th, I posted the information and recipes for Cardamom in this journal.  I chose to make the pound cake recipe on that page.  It was delicious.  I think my husband said it was the best cake he's ever had, and he told me that we're never buying store bought whipped cream again.

You can go to the link above to find the recipe, so this blog is going to be mostly pictures and my own rambling about how it went.  There were a few things in this recipe that I had never done before.  I didn't even own a bundt pan, so I had to buy one of those, but I took advantage of my Amazon Prime free trial to order one with free 2 day shipping to get one.  I had also never used real vanilla beans before.

I started as the recipe directions stated.  I prepped the pan (even though the reviews of the pan I got said that you really didn't need to use anything on it), then mixed my dry ingredients together.

Then, in my mixer, I creamed the butter and sugar until it looked like this

Next was the vanilla bean scraping.  I cut the beans in half the long way and used the tip of my knife to scrape the pods.  I was surprised by two things.  The beans themselves were more waxy feeling than I thought they'd be, and there were more seeds in them than I thought there would be.  I wasn't complaining though.

I still have the shells.  They are sitting in a container with white sugar to make vanilla sugar.  I use it in other dessert type things.

I continued to follow the directions.  A friend of mine gave me some lemons for the lemon juice.  Before I cut and juiced the lemon, I zested it to sprinkle on top of the whipped cream.  You'll see that later.

Once everything was mixed together (eggs, lemon juice, flour mixture and milk), it should look like this (you can see all the little dots of the vanilla bean seeds in there):

Then it gets spooned into the bundt pan carefully.  You don't want to undo all the butter and flour prep that you did in the beginning.  I got it all in there (and I was very proud of myself for not getting too much on the sides), tapped it on the counter like the directions stated and smoothed the top with my spatula.

I let it bake as directed.  It took about an hour like the recipe suggested.  It looked pretty even still in the pan

Next came the scary part.  Bundt pans are notorious for not releasing completely and you end up with chunks missing out of your pretty cake top.  After what had been about an hour cooling in the pan, I decided to give it a shot.  I put my cooling rack on top, flipped it over, and tapped on the pan a few times.  I closed my eyes and pulled the pan up.  When I opened my eyes I was amazed.  It came out beautifully.

My husband came home, looked at it and asked if it was a real cake.  It came out so well that it was shiny (as you can see).

Some time during the baking/cooling process, I made the whipped cream.  It was a pretty simple process.  You added everything together in the mixer:

And mixed it until it was fluffy and held it's shape.  I probably could have beat it for a little while longer, but if you mix it too long, it starts to turn to butter (which I did at a later date on purpose).

And the final served product:

Try it, it's good ... mmm.

Thanks and happy, yummy eating.