The thing is, pound cake can be a little too crazy decadent. The pound cakes of yore would actually sweat butter, if you know what I’m saying. But how else to get a lovely pound-ish cake without the butter?

Brown sugar to the rescue! Thanks to the higher moisture content of my favorite sugar choice, this cake can be made with healthy canola oil and still be the perfect cake to dip in fondue or leave plain. Sounds like a winner to me!

We need some winning right now. Twice a year, ants come into my house and get way too comfy. All the ant spray in the world can’t ultimately stop the little buggers.

One thing that weirds me out about ants is that they crawl in and out through electrical sockets. On an intellectual level, I realize they can’t get electrocuted that way. Still, it makes me mad that they can do it. And that I can’t chase them in there and kill them.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not hugely bloodthirsty or anything. But when I see ants all over the place, I get this bizarre urge to take them all out. It’s my house, dangit. Get out!

Thanks to the ants, I also had to clean out my baking cabinet and throw away anything that might tempt them that was open. Bye bye, chocolate chips. Bye bye, sugary sprinkles. Oh, the pain.

Luckily, I have cake to distract me. Isn’t that always the case?

This is a one-bowl recipe with no crazy creaming or pyrotechnics. Just plain old mix and serve! Plus, this recipe will yield two regular loaves or one gigantic one. That’s pretty neat!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some ants to go deal with. Let’s hope the freeze comes soon!

Whoo boy. This cake will make your holiday season merry and bright! And then some.

In case I’ve never made it blatantly clear enough, pound cake is the happiest of all cakes. It’s fluffy, buttery, and makes a perfect canvas for any flavor.

Do you know what happens if you add 7UP® to pound cake? It gets even lighter and fluffier. And when you add Cherry 7UP® and almond extract, your mouth is in for quite the party.

Now that we’ve cleared Thanksgiving, everyone’s got three weeks to get holiday baking in order. In times like these, the temptation to impress relatives and friends might overwhelm the need to just be practical.

Well, guess what? That isn’t a choice you have to make. Just because a dessert isn’t crazy hard to make doesn’t mean that it can’t be impressive and beautiful. Oh, and delicious. So get your holiday baking in order, but don’t try to be a hero!

Whenever I need to prep for a baking marathon, there’s only one place I need, and that’s Target. They have this special section with all the holiday-themed products and candy. I just stand in the middle of the aisle, staring at everything on the shelves while ideas start hurtling at my head. Then I fill up my cart. It’s probably the closest I ever get to catharsis. Plus, I get to buy everything I need for holiday entertaining, from candy (yesssss, please) to drinks, in just one trip.

This time of year, there’s so much we all need to buy. It’s a lot easier to spend that money if there are coupons involved, and that’s where Ibotta comes in. If you’re not familiar, you need to check it out. Right now, they’re running a special deal on soda: Save $.75 when you buy two 2-liter bottles (varieties include: 7UP®, A&W®, Canada Dry® Ginger Ale, RC® Cola, Sundrop®, Sunkist® Orange, Squirt®, Country Time®, Diet Rite®, Vernors®, Cactus Cooler® and Hawaiian Punch®) and Save $2.00 when you buy four 12-pack cans (varieties include: 7UP®, A&W®, Canada Dry® Ginger Ale, RC® Cola, Sundrop®, Sunkist® Orange, Squirt®, Country Time®, Diet Rite®, Vernors®, Cactus Cooler®, Hawaiian Punch® and Tahitian Treat).

Food bloggers will always give different reasons for why we love what we do. Some enjoy taking photos and editing them. Some love writing the posts, while others enjoy the connections they make with readers and fellow bloggers above all. For me, while I dig all those things, I especially appreciate the constant opportunity to create new desserts and push ideas to their limits. That’s what makes each post exciting, and explains how this cake came to be.

If you add soda to cake, it enhances the cake’s texture. Experimenting with flavor is one of my favorite ways to take a more basic idea and make it really stand out. In this case, Cherry 7UP® gets poured into cake batter. See?

And when all the cake batter gets mixed up (don’t forget that almond extract, it’s key), you get a distinctive holiday cake that will wow your guests. It doesn’t hurt to throw a little sprinkle flair on top of that thick glaze, either. Or to have your cake in a wreath-like shape to bring on happy associations and excitement.

This holiday season, make your gatherings a little brighter with a pound cake that’s sure to make some very hungry people come barreling to your house for dessert. Make time to eat cake! And if you’re not feeling creative right now, I’ve got you covered. Want more recipe inspiration with your favorite drinks? Find more ideas from these perfect holiday moments. We could all use a few of those!

The problem is, they’re called pound cakes for a reason. As in, the pound of butter that gets thrown in per loaf. Dessert blogger or not, I just can’t get behind that unless it’s a very special occasion. But for a pound cake lover, what to do?

This is my second half-pound cake posting. The first had browned butter in it, and I loved it. This one is bursting with almond flavor. The best part is, you can literally cut the butter in half and not miss it. This I swear to you.

We often think we’ll miss things that we wind up not noticing at all. To be honest, I don’t miss Coke. I really thought I would when I gave it up a few years back, but nope. And I don’t miss Sunday morning hangovers, which were an occasional product of my single years. Nope. Not a fun feeling. And for sure I do not miss the days when women weren’t given more choices and rights. Not that I fully remember those days, not having been born yet and all.

When I got married, I chose to (as it’s called) “keep” my name. Luckily, my mother’s generation paved the way for this practice to become a possibility, but I still field way too many questions and raised eyebrows for my taste. When women get married and choose to take their husbands’ names, I don’t question it. It’s a nice practice, and I’m not knocking it at all. It’s just not the path I wanted to take.

My husband’s name happens to be even more difficult to spell and/or understand than mine, which was a practical motivation for my not changing the unusual Russian surname I was born with. That aside, I grew up with an identity strongly tied into my name, and I also established my professional credibility with that name. By the time I got married, I’d been teaching in my county for several years. I knew who I was, and for some reason, my last name was a huge part of that.

And it still is. I also decline to be addressed by the title “Mrs.” and instead go for the “Ms.” of 1970s-era women’s rights invention. If someone calls me by the other title I don’t say anything or get offended, but I’ve always preferred “Ms.” because it’s the exact equivalent as “Mr.” for men. In other words, it doesn’t indicate marital status. I’m happy to be married, but I don’t want my title to say anything about my personal life if my husband’s doesn’t, either.

But all of these are choices, which is great. We used to live in a time when there were fewer options and when people got put into categorical boxes. People should be able to choose how they want to be perceived, what they want to be called, and what constitutes their identity. Unless, of course, that identity is grounded in violating somebody else’s peace or safety.

At the risk of over-preaching, I’ll sit back and take a break from that and get back to what I don’t miss. I don’t miss my last name because I never got rid of it. And I don’t miss the extra half-pound of butter in this cake because it doesn’t need it.

This recipe gets a lot of extra richness from sour cream. I used the reduced-fat kind, but I also wonder how Greek yogurt would work out. My guess is that it would be great. In addition to everything else, almond meal gets mixed into the batter. While you can make almond meal for cheap by grinding your own almonds, I like to buy mine at Trader Joe’s. It saves a lot of food processor time.

When this cake is all done, it’s pretty elegant. You can serve it by itself, top it with vanilla ice cream, or dip chunks into chocolate. And the whole cake is full of little almond flecks. It looks so tasty. The almonds on top get nicely toasted, too. It’s an almond lover’s dream!

If almonds were to disappear tomorrow, I would totally miss them. Much more than Coke, or VHS, or those baby t-shirts that I wore in high school and thought were the best articles of clothing ever invented. Ultimately, we all decide who we want to be, and we reserve the right to make the choices that are best for us. Otherwise, we might miss out on what we really like, who we are, and who we want to become.

You see, I’m one of those women who tries to beat everything. If someone tells me I’ll need to recover from something for 2 weeks, I love to prove them wrong and be up and running at the end of the first week. If someone looks at a piece of cake and says that it’s too rich to eat all at once, you can bet that my piece of cake is long gone. And though I know I’m aging and that time speeds up irrevocably, I keep fighting it. I know it’s futile, but it can’t be helped.

Distraction is a must when you start contemplating your existence, and I like to pour creative energy into birthday cake. This year, my daughter asked vaguely for “chocolate AND vanilla.” I couldn’t ask her to elaborate. She’s a miniature person with a limited vocabulary.

So one night, this idea was born. The base of the cake is pound cake, frosted with a simple vanilla buttercream. Poured on top is the richest, most addictive fudge glaze ever. And let’s not forget the bling.

Or in this case, the cake decorations. She wanted Dora, so Dora she got. I ordered these cake toppers on Amazon (a.k.a. my online home away from home) and piped on a patch of grass for Dora and her buddies to sit on while they eat their cake. It felt like a hopeful design for the upcoming warm weather.

The party was pretty low key, just family and a few friends. We saved the three year-old party for school. I don’t know about you, but the thought of 16 three year-olds running around my house was not appealing. Things are messy enough! This way, everyone got to enjoy a slice of cake in only relative chaos. Unfortunately, the guest of honor didn’t want her picture taken. But her siblings did!

Whenever you make a layer cake, work in three days. Day one is for baking and then chilling the layers, day two is for filling and stacking, and day three is for decorating. You could go faster, of course, but I hate being rushed.

When all is said and done, you have a beautiful cake that nobody will forget. If you’re not partial to kiddie decorations, this cake is classy without all the flair on top, or even with a single rose piped into the center. Go crazy! After all, it’s a birthday!

Today’s offering is inspired by Kenny, a.k.a. my non sugar-craving half, who thinks all desserts are too rich. I love pound cake, but he has two bites and puts it aside. So I decided to halve the butter, brown it, and see what happens. Verdict? Success!

People forget how amazing half can be. Why do you think that combo meals with a cup of soup and half a sandwich are so appealing? Reducing something by half can open up options or completely reframe the way we look at the world. Imagine what life would be like if you always had to do everything wholly at one time. No dividing a project in half and doing the rest later, no eating half the brownie and saving the rest for tomorrow, no dressing partway in black and accenting with red shoes and a red jacket. You get the idea.

Restaurants should definitely serve half portions as a rule. Think how much more customers would be willing to try! You wouldn’t have to stare down a giant plate of pasta, wondering if it could feed a small family. Instead, you could have half of it, and maybe have room for dessert. As a rule of thumb, always save room for dessert! But you’re getting advice from a dessert blogger here.

As for pound cake, putting in a whole pound of butter is definitely called for sometimes, but to be honest, even half that amount still makes for a pretty rich cake. It’s still good for eating by itself, or cutting into chunks to dip in chocolate, or pairing with fruit. You won’t miss that half pound!

In fact, the full half pound isn’t all in the cake itself. You reserve a tablespoon of the browned butter and brush the top of the cake with both that and sugar while it’s baking. It’s pretty much the perfect finish for the cake.

To be honest, I might have let this go in the oven just a touch too long. My baking projects are usually punctuated with needy children, so I would advise you to keep a close eye on the cake. You want a toothpick to come out clean, but that’s it. Don’t wait for it to brown too much.

If we had a chance to do everything more halfway, some parts of life would suffer. But think about how much potential lies in half. After all, we can’t have everything!

With all due respect, that’s a pile of $#!*. Just not true at all, I’m afraid. The darkest hour is 9:30 PM when your kids have gone to bed and you wanted to watch episodes of Cake Boss but you can’t because you’re in piping hell. The cake isn’t looking right, melted frosting is leaking out of the wrong side of the piping bag into your hair, and you feel nothing but deep despair.

Or does that just happen to me?

But I’m happy to report that the incident to which I’m referring has no bearing on the way this cake tastes. This amazing, holy you-know-what-this-is-so-good cake.

Everything else is awesome. I love using pound cake when I’m doing layers because the stuff is solid. I sliced this cake, flipped it around, stacked it, and did all sorts of acrobatics with it. She held firm!

And I’ve been on a raspberry kick lately. Can’t exactly figure out why, but it started with the raspberry crumb bars I made a few weeks ago and now it’s out of control!

It’s a pound cake (very easy, no mixer!) with raspberry and almond filling and a basic vanilla buttercream frosting. Sigh. I love a happy ending. Just ignore the piping issues, people. Pretend it didn’t happen!

Besides, have I mentioned the very best thing about this cake? Dairy-free! That’s right. Turns out that while I used to think a pound cake needed butter like I need a good 7 hours of sleep a night, margarine and soy milk will work fine. I had to make this one without dairy for various reasons, and it worked out great! But feel free to use butter and milk. It ain’t gonna hurt.

This cake turned out to be a winner. Nice, even-ish layers with the perfect, delicate amount of raspberry-almond filling. I used a product called “Schmear” for the almond, which comes in different flavors. It’s kind of like a marzipan spread. First I put a thin layer of that on the cake layers, followed by a thin layer of raspberry jam. I didn’t want the cake to look like it was bleeding.

By the way, I learned in cake decorating class that bakers brush a coat of simple syrup on their cakes after they level them and before they put in the filling. I tried it, and the result was an even moister cake! I can’t recommend it enough. Just bring equal parts sugar and water to a boil. The second it starts boiling, remove from the heat. Easy peasy!

And the frosting is also very simple, as you’ll see below. I used most of it for the cake, and then I dyed the rest pink for the aforementioned piping debacle.

If you want to make a great cake for a birthday or engagement party that’s light and elegant but not so hard, this is it! Get piping!

Cake Layers:

• 1 cup margarine, melted
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup vanilla soy milk

Frosting:

• 1 pound margarine, softened to room temperature
• 1 pound (4 cups) powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:

• raspberry jam
• almond “Schmear” or a spreadable marzipan

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat the sides of two eight or nine-inch cake pans with cooking spray and put a parchment paper circle on the bottom of each pan.

Combine the melted margarine and sugar, stirring until smooth. Add the eggs, lemon juice, and extracts, and mix again. Add the dry ingredients and stir until incorporated. Finally, add the soy milk and mix until the batter is without lumps.

Pour the batter into each cake pan evenly and bake for 30-35 minutes until golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Immediately invert each cake into heavy duty plastic wrap and seal the cake in, leaving the parchment paper on the bottom.

Allow cakes to cool, and then if you have time, put them in the refrigerator overnight.

When you’re ready to decorate, make the frosting. Cream the margarine in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar. When everything is mixed in, add the vanilla and mix again.

Remove the cakes from the plastic wrap and peel off the parchment paper. Level the tops of the cakes and then, using a serrated knife, carefully slice each cake layer in half. If desired, brush the top of each cake with simple syrup.

Layer raspberry jam and (if you have it) almond filling onto the cake in a thin layers. Then, add the frosting and stack the layers, doing a crumb coat. Refrigerate the cake for at least one hour. Cover your bowl of frosting.

When the cake is chilled, ice it with the remaining frosting, being sure to mix the frosting vigorously before covering to get air bubbles out. Decorate as desired.

Those trips were loud. Really loud. And I really never liked car trips, not then and not now. Still, I always enjoyed the part where we drove through tunnels. Suddenly it got all dark and quiet, just a gentle flash of low lights slipping by as our car sped through the serenity. I always felt regretful when we burst out into the sunshine again and the noise recommenced.

So it stands to reason that I have a soft spot in my heart for tunnels. Tunnels of any kind. I love watching animals as they burrow or kids as they wiggle through small spaces. And I have a strange love of desserts that have a surprise in the middle.

It’s a pound cake with an Oreo tunnel in the middle! And it also has Oreo baked into the top. I expected to like this cake when I baked it, but I did not expect to have a hard time stopping when I ate it. It was just too good. I had to give most of it away to be safe.

You see, I’m a sucker for Oreos even when they’re not baked into the middle of one of my favorite kinds of cake. But when they are? All bets are off. I mixed crumbled Oreos with a little butter and white chocolate chips. Something about the white chocolate combined with the sandwich cookies put the filling over the top.

As you can see, I used a bundt pan, but a tube pan would work just as well. Just don’t be like me. I took the cake out of the oven fully meaning to turn it upside down to cool. And then I fell asleep. For seven hours. Hey, it was nighttime and I’d put my pyjamas on. Silly little oversight, but it did mean that cake removal was a bit of a fail. We all make mistakes!

The good news is, I glued the cake back together with a light glaze, which wound up making it even nicer. I don’t want to lie to you. My cakes are not always perfect. But this one was awesome even if I did act like an idiot. Besides, I like practicing a little cosmetic surgery on cake. It makes me feel accomplished.

Did I mention that this cake uses no mixer? Yay! So if you want a delicious and beautiful cake that comes together scarily quickly, go for this one. Especially you Oreo lovers out there! I’ve always got your back.

Cake:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup milk (I used two-percent)

Filling:

• 1/2 package Oreos, crumbled into pieces
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat a bundt or tube pan with cooking spray.

Combine the melted butter and sugar, stirring until smooth. Add the eggs, lemon juice, and extracts, and mix again. Add the dry ingredients and stir until incorporated. Finally, add the milk and mix until the batter is without lumps.

Put the batter aside. Using your fingers, mix the crumbled Oreos and white chocolate chips into the melted butter, combining until the mixture is moist and sticky.

Pat half of the mixture into the bundt pan. Layer half of the pound cake batter on top. Then, sprinkle the remaining Oreo filling evenly over the surface and cover with the remaining batter.

Bake for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Invert the cake over a plate to cool.

When the cake is cool, carefully remove it from the pan. If you’d like to make a simple glaze with powdered sugar and vanilla (or milk), simply mix a cup of the powdered sugar with 2-3 tablespoons of the liquid and drizzle over the cake. You can also serve the cake as-is.

When I finally did try a homemade pound cake, I was bowled over by the butter notes, so striking and so, well, buttery. Having not grown up with butter (a different story for another time), I took to pound cake like a new mom to caffeine. It was just so amazing, and I was a sucker for the duality of the tightly-packed crumb with the butter undertones.

My life got even better when I discovered almond pound cake, which is now a birthday staple in my house. You add some almond extract to the batter, and voila! Amazingness. It’s so rich and I could eat five slices in a row. I have, in fact, which is what got me into some major tummyache territory on my last birthday. Worth it!

Because it’s spring, this is a lemon pound cake with just a gentle drizzle of lemon glaze. It’s not overly tart or tangy, but exudes a much subtler lemon finish. It’s perfect to have with some iced tea while sitting on a porch, swinging back and forth in a warm breeze. Or, if you’re a real person like me, you can scarf it in a closet so the kids won’t see. Either way. Whatever works for you!

I used this awesome silicone cake mold, and the end result is beautiful, though your cake slices might look a little spiky when you cut it up. Just tell everyone it’s a themed Game of Thrones pound cake! Spikes! Yeah!

It doesn’t matter in the end. What does matter is how, toward the bottom, this cake’s texture changes ever so slightly. The top is nicely browned, the middle is dense, and the bottom has an almost syrupy finish. It’s what happens when the glaze goes to the already softer bottom and saturates the cake ever so slightly. It’s the best part of the slice.

The other important thing about this cake is the ease of baking it. Most pound cakes require a mixer to cream butter and sugar. Not this one! You can melt the butter in the microwave and mix everything in. So easy! If you’ve never made pound cake, let this be your first. It’s perfect and simple. I’ve said it before: we’re all busy. Why would I ask you to do something terribly hard?

You can also add some variations, depending on your tastes and baking prowess. Lemon zest, in either the cake or glaze (or both)? Go for it! Powdered sugar dusting instead of glaze? Why not?

Enjoy impressing people with this pound cake, so appropriate for the warm weather. It will give you a moment in the sun, I promise!

Cake:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk (I used two-percent)

Glaze:

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat a loaf pan or a small bundt or tube pan with cooking spray.

Combine the melted butter and sugar, stirring until smooth. Add the eggs and lemon juice, and mix again. Add the dry ingredients and stir until incorporated. Finally, add the milk and mix until the batter is without lumps.

Bake for 40-50 minutes until the top is golden. The baking time will vary depending on your choice of pan. A loaf pan will need more baking time than a tube pan.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely.

While the cake cools, prepare the glaze. Mix the lemon juice into the powdered sugar until a glaze forms. Using a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake and allow to set.

Cut into slices and serve. Store covered at room temperature for up to one week!