Yummy Experiment #50: Eggnog Pound Cake

Wow! I cannot believe it. This is now my 50th experiment.

I remember my first baking experiment, Cranberry Nut Bread, back in January 2014. It eventually led me to try baking other types of bread, cakes, quiches, etcetera. I’d be in the kitchen baking away at least twice a week.

Just when I was on a roll, my dad passed away. Everything made no sense and got pushed to the back burner. Grief is one hell of a tricky bastard. What I enjoyed – my baking experiments – I stopped. While I read that being detached and disinterested were part of normal grief reaction, it just felt meaningless and useless.

I tried baking a cake that I’ve never done before – Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. Thought it would jump-start the baking mojo, but it didn’t.

But when I saw the recipe for Eggnog Pound Cake from Jessica of The Entertaining House, my curiosity was piqued. She even described it as “the best damned thing you’ll bake this holiday”. So why not? You can find the full recipe here.

See this lovely batter? It was the result of creaming the butter and sugar, adding eggs, flour, nutmeg, eggnog, vanilla and rum. I took this picture after doing steps 1 to 4.

I poured the batter into my fluted cake pan and baked it for 90 minutes.

It came out looking this way, so I used my handy cake slicer leveler to trim off that part. We sampled the cake without making it obvious that we had a slice! No one’s the wiser.

Here’s the cake cooling off in the rack.

I topped the Eggnog Pound Cake with confectioners sugar.

I brought it to work where it turned out to be such a big hit. People from other departments who I didn’t know approached me to say how delicious it was. Talk about an ice breaker! Will I bake it again? Definitely!

It turned out to be a pretty tasty experiment. It’s also good to remember how much fun baking can be.