Chocolate Pound Cake

I’m totally jonesing for chocolate and, by happy coincidence, I’ll have my cousin and her husband in town this weekend to go to the horse races, so I splurged and made this chocolate pound cake.

1 cup cocoa powder
2 cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder (I substituted instant coffee)
1 1/2 cup unsalted butter (3 sticks), softened
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
¼ cup water

Use either a 10″ tube pan or two 5″ loaf pans. Instead of buttering and flouring the pans, butter and use cocoa powder to dust the sides and bottom of the pan. Set aside.

Sift together cocoa powder, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt and instant espresso powder. Blend well and set aside.

Separate eggs and beat the whites to soft peaks in another bowl. Set aside.

Put butter in your mixer bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and beat for 5 minutes. Then beat in egg yolks one at a time. Add in vanilla and mix well.

Combine buttermilk with water. Add the dry ingredients alternating with the wet to the sugar mixture. Mix well to be sure that all is combined well to avoid streaks. Fold in the egg whites.

Pour into the greased pan and bake at 325 F. for and hour and 20-30 minutes. If using two loaf pans, at 45 minutes rotate and switch positions of the pans. Pound cake is done when a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Enjoy!