I like the real thing. It's sweet but not too much. It's "moist" but not greasy. It's good for a few days and makes THE BEST toast when it goes stale.
Gotta watch out for the right recipe. Even the pound-cake recipe in the Betty Crocker (2003 edition) cookbook isn't a pound cake. Many pound cake recipes just don't work. But people cook so little now that they don't recognize a fallen cake. They bring it to the potluck without any compunction and even brag about their cake.
A proper pound cake cake does not even have chemical leavening. Preheat the oven, grease/flour a pan, measure out the flour, chop nuts or fruit, get out a rubber spatula, put the baby in the play pen, etc. Then whip/beat the eggs into the creamed sugar and butter. The eggs and bubbles whipped into the batter are the leavening. Then fold in the flour quickly-like and pop it in the oven. When I say "quick", I mean 30 seconds from adding flour to closing the oven door.
Even so, I sometimes add a little baking powder. A little.
Pound cake with fresh-ground whole-whole wheat flour is---good. Some recipes need to be adapted but a good old-fashion pound cake is fine with real flour.
Now, let's look on the internet. The recipe below gets some things right and other wrong. It's not a pound of flour. You always put cake (and all other raised items) in a pre-heated oven, not a cold one. This is because you want to set the bread/cake before the bubbles will pop or float out of the batter. Also, those tiny bubbles you beat into the cake will expand. If you want a particularly light cake, you have to steam the oven to prevent the top from crusting over in the first few minutes of baking. That's more of a bread issue (same with slashes on top of the loaf) but I suspect it applies to all baked items. Furthermore, I doubt that someone with a wood-fired stove/oven would ever start cold because stable oven temperatures are probably more easily achieved with coals.
http://hbs1991.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/old-fashioned-real-pound-cake/
Here's another recipe that's totally wrong. I'm not looking hard for these. They're in the first few pages of the Google. For starters, 3 C of sugar is not a pound, 4 C of flour is not a pound, and 1.75 C butter IT NOT A FREAKIN' POUND! COME ON people. The recipe also includes a full dose of baking powder (1 t/C) which isn't traditional and contributes to the taste. Also, the main part of the mixing should come before the flour is added, but this lady mixes it for 5 min after adding flour. She says it's delicious but I wonder. I've had cake that I mixed too long and it's not good. Maybe she hasn't had a proper pound cake lately and her taste has shifted a bit. That's OK but this isn't traditional pound cake.
http://cubbyholes.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/moms-old-fashioned-true-pound-cake/
Another recipe---too much sugar, substitution of chemically altered plant oil in place of butter. But only a small amount of chemical leavening is used and the directions are basically correct, though they do not bother trying to explain the important bits.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/mamas-pound-cake-recipe/index.html
Number Uno Google hit on pound cake (below) doesn't have any butter in the recipe. Too much sugar, not enough egg and includes milk.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/old-fashioned-pound-cake-ii/
Another top-10 google hit (below) is totally off...
http://www.food.com/recipe/old-fashioned-lemon-pound-cake-457616
Well, I could go on and on, but I think the point has been made. These cakes may or may not work (as in, not fall) and they may be delicious but they're not pound cake.
