Last week, I ate the most delicious almond pound cake I have ever had. It might have been the only almond pound cake I had ever had, but I would even venture to say that this was the best pound cake I had ever had. It all started when my good pals John and Lisa got engaged.
How friggin cute are they. Lisa asked me to be a bridesmaid, and John asked my husband Nick to be his groomsman, and of course we both accepted. Lisa has to be one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is the kind of girl who really likes you before she even meets you. This also seems to translate into her cake preferences; if it's cake, she likes it. So, she invited me to the cake tasting because I am not the nicest person anyone has ever met, and I certainly do not whole heartedly embrace all cake as delicious. In fact, I have very discriminating tastes. Fondant? I don't think so. All purpose flour in angel food? What's the matter with you!? Imitation vanilla flavoring? Not on your life!
So last week, Lisa, John and I headed over to "Classic Cakes" in Carmel, IN, and tasted some cake. And after a taste of their almond pound cake, I demanded that the couple include this flavor in the most important four-tier-cake of their lives! They happily obliged, so all ended well. But now, all I can think about is delicious almond pound cake. I quickly looked for a recipe, and found one on America's Test Kitchen. I made it and brought it to a dinner party. Our friends rather liked it.
However, I can not recommend the recipe. It's a smidge dry, but that might just have been because I didn't bake it in a loaf pan. More importantly, it's boring. The only almond aspects involved are a couple teaspoons of almond extract and some slivered almonds on top. There was no bold almondy goodness explosion in your mouth! So I'm on the lookout for a good almond pound cake recipe. I'm going to try out a few more, and let you know what works best. Almonds, here I come!
