Ayesha Curry's Holiday Pound Cake Features An Unlikely Ingredient

It's always the simplest recipes that have the most room to play. Pound cakes were originally as simple as you can get; it was just 1 pound each of butter, eggs, sugar, and flour. Now that the majority of people can read and write, an old British recipe built around how easily it can be passed by word of mouth is no longer needed, causing pound cakes to evolve. Celebrity Chef Ayesha Curry, who is no stranger to adding unexpected ingredients to classic dishes, has an ingredient British peasants in the 1700s most likely had never even heard of: bitters.

Chef Curry recently shared her recipe with Us Weekly. Her twist involves adding half a teaspoon of bitters, such as Angostura, into her lemon glaze and then another teaspoon of the intense flavor into her batter. Bitters are an alcohol-based extract, and they bring an added complexity to a simple dessert. According to Curry, the resulting cake has a short lifespan in her home. 

If adding bitters is up your alley, but you want to take it even further, you can try our recipe for an Old-Fashioned pound cake with bourbon, orange, cherry, and a bitters glaze. An old fashioned isn't the only cocktail that works in pound cake form. A classic buttered rum seems made to turn into this vintage dessert. Make sure you use a dark rum so the flavor really shines, and add warming spices like cinnamon and cloves to round out the experience.

If cocktail pound cakes don't appeal to you, you can make a version to fit in with your Thanksgiving feast. Adding orange zest and chopped-up cranberries makes it an easy dessert to set out next to the many pies. Or, use a mix of typical fall spices and apple cider to make a pound cake version of the autumn classic apple cider donut. It's not hard to find new ways to play with this old-school treat, so feel free to experiment on your own and have fun!