Nebraska Statehood 150-Governor's Favorite Pound Cake

"Oh look Floppy Ears, someone made Maxine Morrison's pound cake! I love  that cake."
"So did Governor Morrison, hence the name, "Governor's Favorite Pound Cake."
"Well...she also has a recipe for something called a "Corned Beef Salad Surprise" involving tinned corned beef, salad cream and unflavoured gelatin."
"That would have been quite a surprise, even in the 60's."
"Indeed."

I don't think it is unfair to point out Maxine Morrison was more interesting than her husband. The former First Lady of Nebraska (1961-67) was born in 1915 and grew up in Greeley, Nebraska. After attending college she worked as a teacher. After marrying in 1935, the couple moved to Lincoln where Mrs. Morrison became a fashion director for Gold's department store. When her husband became Governor, Mrs. Morrison became both the first chair of the National Governor's Wives Association, and the Nebraska Trade Mission to Europe. She died in 2004.

                            Photo-McCook Gazette
If that isn't a look that says, "I sure could go for a slice of pound cake" I don't know what is.


Governor Morrison is best remembered for enabling the coverage of NET (Nebraska Educational Television) and helping to expand the scientific research departments at the University of Nebraska.

I would like to thank Danny for digging up all this information for today's post. Now, onto the recipe.


I did not have a good feeling about this pound cake. There's no leavening agent, and you don't beat the egg whites separately for height. There weren't instructions about preheating the oven. Against my better judgement, I preheated-something my own pound cake recipe does not require. Because of the era the book hailed from, I decided to err on the side of pre-heating (without it, the cake would also have required longer than an hour to bake. Sometimes with old recipes you have to play detective). There were no instructions for treating the pan, so I buttered and floured it-that was a good call. If I could do anything differently, I'd add a pinch of salt and use a smaller tube pan as it didn't rise a great deal (it did rise a bit).

You Will Need:

2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
5 large eggs
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Add flour gradually.Stir in flavorings. Pour into a greased and floured tube pan.  Bake in a preheated 325 degree F. oven for about 1 hour. Cool on rack.


So, how was the cake? Delicious! I can see why it was the Governor's favourite. I served it with some sliced strawberries macerated in a bit of sugar.  Whipped cream could turn it into a fancy strawberry shortcake style dessert. The cake is solid without being stodgy, and the buttery flavour reminds me of shortbread. The cake stayed fresh over a week stored at room temperature beneath a dome. We finished every last piece, much to the displeasure of the greedy squirrel that stands at our patio door begging. Sorry, Blondin-Mrs. Morrison's pound cake is far too soft for sharpening your teeth, and far too delicious to share with a rodent.

Next time, I have a casserole and I promise it does not include corned beef and gelatin!

Chai Poundcake

I put some of the chai concentrate to use in this poundcake (I also made ice cream). I've already made a second batch of concentrate as Danny has been having some mixed into a glass of milk for elevenses. I've been joining him, though I pour mine over a glass of ice and add a bit of milk, rather than adding the concentrate to a glass of milk.

This is a "keeping" cake. Make it, wrap it tightly, and let it mellow several days in the fridge before serving. Be sure to serve the slices at room temperature. I served it with pickled/spiced peaches and a bit of whipped cream.

You Will Need:

1 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening (this helps it keep and stay soft-don't skip it)
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar (or a teaspoon ground cinnamon mixed in granulated)
5 large eggs
3 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chai concentrate
1/2 cup heavy cream

Grease and flour a large tube pan, and set aside. Do Not preheat the oven (trust me on this one). Cream the butter and shortening until light. Slowly add the sugar until incorporated. Beat in eggs one at a time. Sift together the dry ingredients. Mix together the chai concentrate, vanilla extract, and cream. Add, alternating with the creamed ingredients. Pour evenly into pan. Place pan on a baking sheet, and place in cold oven. Set to 325 degrees F. and bake about 1 1/2 hours or until cake tests done. Cool in pan on a rack twenty minutes. Carefully unmould, and cool completely on rack before wrapping tightly to store. They call it a "pound* cake, but mine weighed in at four-this is a substantial cake.

*Yes, I do know that has to do with the original weights of the ingredients.

Because you were a good reader, and read to the bottom of the post, I'm going to reward you with a beautiful early 20th Century photograph of the painter Gustav Klimt who looks like he was the sort of man that would have enjoyed a good poundcake-and a comfortable smock.

Molasses Pound Cake

I can't get the photos to upload correctly (arrgh) but the recipe is too great to skip posting. I adapted it from Better Homes and Gardens Pies and Cakes, 1966-but changed quite a bit as I went. The glaze I ended up giving it was simply apple cider mixed with icing sugar, which is really delicious-I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner.

You Will need:

1/2 cup shortening (I used butter)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup full flavour molasses
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
2/3 cup whole milk

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light. Beat in eggs, mixing well. Beat in molasses. Add dry ingredients alternating with milk. Pour into a greased and floured Bundt cake pan (6 cup) and bake at 350 degrees F. for 40 minutes or until cake tests done. Let cool, in pan on rack for 1 hour. Cool completely on rack. Glaze, or dust with confectioner's sugar before serving.

Coconut Cream Trifile "Pie"

I had quite a bit of poundcake leftover from Friday. I froze half, and I put the rest to use in this.

Danny had been reading a story that mentioned coconut cream pie. he asked if we could make one. I absently told him to go look for a recipe, and he immediately turned to the pie section of my 1950 edition of the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.

"OK", I thought, "why not?"

Danny wanted chocolate whipped cream which turned out rather well (I used a few tablespoons of powdered cocoa rather than melting and cooling squares of chocolate). I put everything together earlier in the day and by this evening we had a really delicious dessert. Truthfully, it will be even better tomorrow when the poundcake has really absorbed the custard, but then it won't cut into attractive slices for a photograph on the cooking blog.

I cheated and toasted the coconut in a small frying pan on the stove. You really need to watch it when doing coconut that way, but it did save the hassle of heating the oven-and the house smelled so wonderful.

You Will Need:

Stale poundcake, cut into slices to fit the bottom of a pie plate
Custard (recipe follows)
3/4 cup coconut plus 1/4 cup for toasting as a topping
Whipped cream with optional cocoa and powdered sugar

For the custard:

2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
1 tbsp. AP flour
3 cups whole milk
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 tbsp. butter
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup coconut

In a saucepan mix the sugar, salt, cornstarch, and flour. Slowly add the milk, whisking constantly. Bring to a boil over medium heat. When mixture boils, cook one minute longer, then remove from heat. Add about 1 cup of the mixture slowly to the eggs and whisk quickly. Slowly add another 1/2 cup and mix well. Return egg mixture to pot and return to heat. Whisking constantly, return to a boil over medium heat and then cook one minute longer or until mixture is thickened. Remove from heat, stir in butter and vanilla and fold in coconut. Remove to a clean bowl and cool. When slightly cooled, chill before using.

To Assemble:

Pour cooled custard over slices of poundcake in pie plate. Top generously with whipped cream, flavoured and sweetened to your taste, and then toss top with a scattering of toasted coconut. Chill several hours before serving.

Lavender/Lemon Sour Cream Poundcake

I was getting impatient-a whole jar of lavender sugar that hadn't been used yet. I didn't want to waste it on just any old cake. Actually, why ever make any old cake? You know?

This is a really heavy cake, and there's quite a bit of folding at the end-you'll need your upper arm strength for this. Too bad I don't have any (well, not much). Don't say I didn't warn you.

The decorations are simply egg white and confectioner's sugar with food colouring. I didn't think I had the patience for piping them out, so I moulded them from sugar paste. Cute, I guess. Danny was amused. The icing is confectioner's sugar and water-very simple.

I did go ahead and refill the lavender jar with more sugar-the sachet seemed to still have quite a bit of life left. This could turn out to be a great discovery.

You Will Need:

3 cups AP flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups lavender sugar
Grated zest of a lemon
6 eggs, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and lightly flour a 10 inch tube pan. Sift together flour and baking soda.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and lemon zest until very light. Add eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition. Add flour and sour cream, alternating-do this with a rubber spatula and fold, rather than stir. This is heavy work, I know. I'm sorry.

Stir in vanilla, and pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until it tests done-about 1 hour 15 minutes. Cool completely in pan on rack.

Browned Butter Pound Cake

I only baked this because I enjoy torturing myself.

You need to brown the butter well ahead and chill it back to a solid before baking the cake-so plan in advance.

You Will Need:

1 cup browned butter, cooled and solidified
1/4 cup shortening
2 1/2 cups vanilla sugar
5 large eggs
3 cups AP flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk

Cream together the butter and shortening. Gradulally add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Sift together the dry ingredients and add the vanilla to the milk. Add, alternating.

Grease a tube pan and fill with batter. Place on a baking sheet (because they always leak) and set in a COLD oven. Bake at 325 degrees F. for about 1 hour and twenty minutes or until cake tests done with a toothpick. Cool in pan twenty minutes and then cool completely on a rack.

Coffee Poundacke, Gourmet November 1971

Two weeks in a row I've made a pound cake from the old Gourmet magazine collection-must be a theme. The recipe has a glaze which I didn't bother with, but I will include at the end of the recipe. I did not line the pan with waxed paper, but greased and floured it instead-no difficulties removing it at all. The recipe was vague as to size of eggs, etc. so I will specify what I used.

Plantation Inn Pound Cake:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a loaf pan, 11x4x3 inches.

1/3 cup instant coffee
1/2 cup whole milk-heated
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups AP flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Dissolve the coffee in the hot milk and set aside to cool. Cream together the butter and sugar until light. Add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Sift together the flour and baking powder and add, alternating with the coffee milk. Mix until well blended. Pour into pan and smooth evenly. Bake 90 minutes or until cake tests done by inserting a toothpick in the centre. Cool ten minutes in the pan, then cool completely on a rack. When cool, top with glaze.

Glaze:

Beat together 1/2 cup butter and 2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar until smooth. Add 1/4 cup instant coffee dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling water and cooled. Beat in 1 egg and combine well. Spread generously on the cake. Note-the egg does not get cooked, so unless you have a particularly strong constitution, or know the source of your eggs well, you may prefer to skip this.

Poundcake

This is my secret poundcake recipe. It is the very best thing I bake. About the only thing that can go wrong is having it all leak out the bottom of the tube pan, but that is easily prevented by baking it on a cookie sheet. This cake stands up to being filled, frozen, toasted or soaked in booze. I have filled it with ice cream and frosted it as well. The flavourings are flexible (don't like vanilla? Use lemon zest or orange extract) and it even takes well to cocoa. The recipe makes quite a bit, but as I already mentioned, it freezes well. I usually wrap it in individual pieces to be taken from the freezer for a quick snack on demand. With a generous spoonful of homemade jam, it is hard to imagine a better breakfast.

Now, I'm sharing the recipe so you can have a secret poundcake recipe too.


You Will Need:

1 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
2 1/2 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup whole milk


Cream the butter and shortening together until light. Add the sugar slowly. Beat in eggs one at a time. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. To the milk add the vanilla extract. Add the flour in three additions alternating with the milk. Pour into greased 9 inch tube pan. Place pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips. Place in a COLD oven and set to 325 degrees F. Bake 1 hour and twenty minutes or until done. Cool in pan on rack for 30 minutes. Carefully unmould and finish cooling on rack. Serve as desired.

Apricot Pound Cake

Until I was a mother it never crossed my mind to have apricot nectar as a staple kitchen item. As a special treat, Danny gets a small can of it on Friday evening and woe be mama if she forgets to buy it. Once in a while I happen upon recipes that call for nectar and I'm always interested in giving them a try. This recipe sounded interesting, but faulty.

I've baked enough pound cakes in my life (one could argue, too many) that I know dumping all the ingredients into a bowl and simply mixing and pouring isn't the way to go. It probably would make cake, but I decided to approach it the way I've always dealt with dense, rich cakes by creaming together butter and sugar, adding eggs one at a time and alternating liquids with flour in three additions. I also looked at the recipe and knew the listed amount of baking soda wasn't going to be enough. I doubled it. The original was at About.com in the Southern Cooking section. Usually, these are pretty well edited, but this one was seriously off. Again, it might have worked fine, but I am pleased with the results using a more traditional method.

I also ignored the instructions to coat the cake in apricot jam and made a sauce with strained preserves, tinned apricots and lemon juice. Some whipped cream was a nice addition.

In the middle of making this cake, one of the beaters stopped rotating on my hand mixer. I pulled it out and proceeded with one beater, which in the very last seconds of mixing also stopped. I'll always think of this as the cake that killed the hand mixer but really, it shouldn't have. The batter wasn't too heavy and the mixer was just over a year old. It wasn't cheap either. One-year warranty. Boo hiss, Sunbeam-I'll never buy your appliances again. Call me old fashioned, but when I buy an appliance I don't expect to be replacing it yearly. On a brighter note, the whipped cream I made with a whisk in a metal bowl actually came together faster and better than when I use the electric mixer. So there! You should see me do egg whites in my copper bowl. For an arthritic cripple I sure can wield a whisk.

Papa and Danny were both delighted with their dessert and even admitted it might be as good as (though not better than) mama's chocolate pudding. I tried a bite (a scant, bite really) of the cake, but as I'm still having difficulty swallowing I skipped the fruit and sauce. I suspect it will be even better tomorrow after it has thoroughly cooled and set. I'm freezing half, as it is a very large cake and will update the post when it is served from the freezer noting the results. In my experience, pound cakes freeze beautifully though mine do not usually have sour cream as an ingredient. The sour cream was on deep sale at our grocer two weeks ago and I've been using it in place of buttermilk when I can. I still have another large container, but it is good until May. With food prices being as they are, I find it best to adjust my menus to what's on sale. When I came home with all that sour cream my husband gave me an odd look. I shrugged and chalked it up to being half Ukrainian. You could eat worse than a slice of home baked rye bread slathered with sour cream.

You Will Need:

For The Pound Cake:

3 cups sugar
1-cup butter-at room temperature
1-cup sour cream
½ cup apricot nectar
1-teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 drops concentrated lemon oil or, 1 tablespoon lemon zest
6 eggs at room temperature
3 cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour a 12-cup tube pan (the recipe called for a Bundt cake pan, but that sounded like a disaster waiting to happen). Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Add the sour cream and mix well. Add the extract and lemon oil or zest to the nectar and stir. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.

Alternating between the flour and the nectar/extract mixture, add to the butter mixture in three additions. Mix very well and then beat on high for about three minutes. Pour into prepared pan, place pan atop a baking sheet (because you know a tube pan is going to leak some) and bake 1 hour and twenty minutes or until it tests done (mine took about an hour and forty minutes but my oven is possessed). Cool on a rack in the pan for twenty minutes, then very carefully remove and finish cooling on rack.

For the Sauce:

1 large tin of apricot halves in syrup, drained and sliced in half (if you like)
½ jar of the cheapest, store-brand apricot preserves you can find (honestly, you do not want to waste expensive preserves for this)
1 tablespoon lemon juice

In a saucepan over low heat, melt the preserves with the lemon juice until thin. Put through a fine strainer removing the fruit (in my experience the "fruit" is mostly skins anyway). Mix well with the sliced apricots and spoon warm over cake.

Add some homemade, lightly sweetened whipped cream if you're feeling decadent. Your family might even like it (almost) as much as chocolate pudding.