Pound Cake

What do we define as a day, week/weekend, year etc. well spent? I spent my weekend well, in my opinion. I cooked (pumpkin pasta with portobellos) for some friends, I did a little baking which I also shared with my friends and family, and I also celebrated a friend's birthday with him. To me, that sounds successful. Whatever a good weekend means to you, I hope yours was fabulous,

Now, back to baking. I finally got around to trying my first recipe from "Baking with Julia" by Dorie Greenspan. That name should ring a bell for a lot of us, she's one of the most famous bakers of, well, all time. This book is a collection of recipes by "America's Best Bakers". I must admit that I initially bought it without having a full grasp of the context of the book. It was recommended to me by Amazon, and I bought it in the hopes that Julia Child was a contributing author, as I really enjoyed the writing style of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child. Although the writing and recipes were quite different, this first recipe surely did not disappoint, and I am definitely looking forward to trying more recipes in the near future. I think I might tackle the cantuccini next.
It's a bit strange of me to jump in a book and not try the very first recipe written in the book as my first, but the ingredients were so simple and I really had a hankering for this cake, I just couldn't help it! I usually like to read a cookbook, then mark a few recipes, try the very first recipe, and then get into it. However, my brother really enjoys simple homemade white bread (the first recipe, with the exception of the flaky pastry dough) so I will definitely be trying that too. Enough about my strange compulsions that apparently aren't compulsions... Here's this lovely, traditional pound cake, scaled for an untraditional but lovely bundt, as is in this lovely cookbook.