Hand Mixers vs Standalone

Mom started out using hand mixers and the motors gave out on all of them eventually. In those early days of baking her butter pound cakes it took her longer to mix the ingredients. As the years passed she started buying different types of mixers and, eventually going right back to the old 2 blade manual hand mixer because the other never lasted or worked quite well.

When she started selling her butter pounds at Capitol Hill, Eastern market in DC and then at the Benning Road market in DC, request for more butter pound cakes grew. She decided she had to find a mixer that would make her life more easy once and for all. She said she needed to be able to mix and bake more than one cake at a time.

I remember her coming home one day with this nice pretty mixer. She started baking cakes so fast that instead of it taking her 5 days to bake for her customers it only took her 2 days.

She eventually went out and bought another one just like it. One was a red KitchenAid mixer. She told me she was able to mix 2 cakes in it at one time and the other was a small white KitchenAid mixer that mixed 1 cake at a time.

I can still hear the sound of her mixers going when I would call her on her baking days. I don't ever remember her having to replace these mixers because, for as long as I can remember there has been the big red and the little white mixers in her kitchen in their designated places.

Butter Pound Cakes

My mom started selling her butter pound cakes at various markets in Washington, DC back in the 80's up till this year. Before that for years she would bake them and give them away.

I have never been a baker. This is kind of surprising to me because my mom use to bake the most yummylicious butter pound cakes every week. As a child growing up I couldn't tell you at that time which tasted best, licking the batter left in the bowl or the actual cake itself.

Moms butter pound cake batter was so creamy and buttery that other than chocolate cakes I'm not a big fan of other kinds of cakes today.

Although my brothers and I never put a cake on the scale I believe 1 cake had to weigh at least 10 pounds easily but maybe more like 20 thinking again. One slice was equivalent to 3.

Anyway I will be blogging about some of her recipes, tricks and tips.