Aniseed Pound Cake

This aniseed pound cake is awesome with a coffee or cuppa tea. I happen to love the flavour of anise, so I was eager to make this recipe from Bijoux.com. The recipe calls for confectioners sugar (I call it icing sugar) to be sprinkled on top, but although that looks pretty, I’m not a fan of the metallic taste of the sugar.

The cake was really good even four or five days after baking! I put some of it in the freezer, and it was awesome to be able to pull it out when I had company coming for afternoon tea.

Of course, being Canadian I should have changed the name to ‘slightly less than half a kilogram’ cake, but that sounds a bit pedantic. And in this recipe no ingredient is a pound anyways, unlike the traditional pound cake that has a pound each of butter, sugar, egg and flour. So maybe I should call it pound-ish cake . . .

The only planning ahead you have to do is taking the butter and eggs out of the fridge early so that they can come to room temperature.

This recipe makes one 8-inch/20 cm loaf, or four small loaves.

What you need:

• 1 cup (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 & 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 5 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 & 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons anise seed

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/165°C. Butter the bottom of a loaf pan, then line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Butter and flour the parchment paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar using an electric mixer, beating on high for about 10 minutes until it becomes light and fluffy.
3. Beat the eggs in one at a time on medium-low speed.
4. Stir the flour, salt and anise seeds in by hand just until it is combined.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the tops a little. Tapping the pans down on the counter will help to settle the batter. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
6. Place the loaf pan on a rack and let it cool before removing it from the pan. 
7. To store, wrap the loaf tightly in plastic wrap. You may freeze it if you wish.