When Sue Beard tells you about her favorite recipe, the aroma from days long past comes back. “I like sharing this recipe not only because it is such a traditional southern dessert but primarily because it brings back so many wonderful family times and aromas from my grandmother’s kitchen in Alabama that I remember as a child.”

Visits to her grandmother’s house were a summer highlight. “One of the things she did to show all of us how much she loved and missed us was to bake our favorite desserts, including this recipe for pound cake,” Sue explains.

During her first years in Alabama, her mom, who was also a great southern cook, prepared a traditional, sit-down meal which covered all the food groups, as well as desserts. However, both her dad and step-dad were career military so she spent most of her childhood and teen years in Austin, Texas and Rome, NY. However, Sue still enjoyed Southern cooking, including the pound cake.

“I moved to North Carolina as a very young bride in 1973 where my mother-in-law taught me to cook more good southern meals. Today, my husband Rod and I live in the Norman Island section of Cornelius and have a wonderful blended family of four adult daughters and four grandchildren. Two of our daughters and granddaughters live here and two daughters and grandsons live a couple of hours away.”

Sue and Rod attend Lake Norman Baptist Church, where she is also on staff as ministry assistant to the senior pastor. They really enjoy having friends over, especially during football season as they cheer on the Panthers and everyone brings their favorite “tail-gating” dish to share.

“As for the pound cake, I love to serve it anytime but especially at spring and summer holidays and family gatherings,” she says.

LEMON BUTTERMILK pound Cake with Glaze

Ingredients:

Cake

• 2 1/2 cups white sugar

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened

• 4 eggs

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon lemon extract

Glaze

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 tablespoon lemon zest

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a tube or bundt pan. Beat white sugar and 1 1/2 cups butter together in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 10 mins.   Add eggs one at a time, thoroughly beating each egg into the butter mixture before adding the next. 

Sift flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl.  Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture; mix well.  Pour in 1/2 the buttermilk and beat until combined.  Repeat adding flour mixture and buttermilk, beating well after each addition, and ending with the flour mixture. Stir lemon extract into batter.  Pour batter into tube pan.

REDUCE oven temp to 325 degrees. Bake in the oven until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean, 60 to 75 mins.  Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to cake.

Glaze: Beat powdered sugar, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons butter, and lemon zest in bowl until smooth.  Pour about 1/2 the glaze over the cake; let cool.  Once cool, pour remaining glaze over cake.

Recipe by Sue Beard