Pound Cake Simple & Delicious - Thank you Mom

So it's here again.  Mother's Day.  I write out cards for my mother in law and my favorite aunt who is my 2nd mother and I miss writing that card for my mom.  I just miss her.  She's the one person in the world I could trust, who was always there, no matter how annoying or nice I was.  She was that person I could tell anything to and I just miss her.  I can not take her number out of my phone.  Do I miss her on Mothers Day?  No, I miss her everyday.
As I've written before, my mom is the one who got me started with baking.  A Girl Scout Cookie Contest and I won! I have one of her cookbooks.

The Gourmet Cookbook, copyright 1950

It has a special place on my cookbook shelf!  

It's a little worn, but open it up and the illustrations are so beautiful. 

 There are many recipes, and many I would not even attempt but I Just Love this cookbook.  In honor of my mom, I'm going to try one of the dessert recipes.

The intro to this section, La Patisserie, tells how the art of La Patisserie dates back centuries, when angry pagen gods could be appeased by sacrifices of sweet cakes.  Wow! not sure I have any angry gods to appease. So which one should I make?   I've decided to make a pound cake and  then add fresh fruit.  This is one everyone will like.

So here goes: word for word but I did halve the recipe as I didn't need 2 of them

Poundcake

Sift 2 1/4 cups of sifted flour with 1/4 tsp of saltand sift again.  Cream 1/2 lb  of butter and add gradually 8oz of sugar beating till mixture is fluffy.  Add the yolks of 5 eggs till batter is light.
Sift in the sifted flour a little at a time & beat well.  Stir in 1tsp of vanilla, 1/2 tsp of lemon extract, blend well & carefully fold in 5 egg whites beaten till stiff but not dry.  (Wanted to check on that.) here's what I found:

Why do recipes for beaten egg whites always warn you to beat until stiff but not dry and is there a way to keep this from happening?

When egg whites are over beaten, they start to lose their moisture, airiness, and smoothness and break down when folded into other ingredients. The miracle solution here is surprisingly easy: use 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar for every egg white (1 teaspoon for 8 egg whites). 

Add it to the whites soon after you begin to beat them, when they start to get frothy. Note: egg white will never beat to stiff peaks if there is it comes into contact with any grease, either from the bowl, beater or even a bit of broken egg yolk.

Pour batter into loaf pan.  (I always use parchment paper) 

Bake in a slow oven at 300 degrees for 1 1/4 hours and cake tester comes out clean.

Happy Mothers Day to my Mom.  I love you xoxo

Would love to hear comments!!