FOOD NEWS
The Secret Ingredient Ina Garten Uses For The Best Pound Cake Crust
BY KYLE GRACE MILLS
The perfect pound cake has a buttery and tender interior with a crackly, browned exterior. The latter can be hard to perfect, but chef Ina Garten knows just how to do it.
Rather than leaving it up to chance, Garten guarantees a great crust on her pound cake by generously coating the inside of her cake pan with turbinado or demerara sugar.
Turbinado and demerara are both minimally-refined sugars that contain molasses. These coarse sugars add a caramelized flavor and fantastic crunchy texture to your cake.
As the pan heats in the oven, the sugar melts and forms a delicate pattern around the pound cake, becoming divinely crunchy while the interior stays moist and tender.
To borrow from Garten's recipe, grease your cake pan with a coat of vegetable oil or butter, then
sprinkle in roughly 1/4 cup of demerara or turbinado sugar.
Turn and rotate the pan so that the sugar evenly coats the pan's surface, then add your batter and bake for a pound cake with the best sugary crust ever.