Southern Candied Pecan Pound Cake

I had a friend ask me to make a Pecan Pound Cake a few weeks ago. I told her to give me a little time to round up some pecans. I have pecan trees in my yard, but they have not been producing the last couple of years. I hate to spend a lot of money on pecans when I have the trees! Ugh! Anyway, I finally found some, so here I go... The next step was to come up with a recipe that I felt would make the most of the precious pecans I had. I looked through all my Mama's and my Grandmamas' recipes and this is what I came up with...

Pound Cake:

1 cup pecan halves, broken into pieces and toasted

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2¼ cups self-rising flour

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1⅓ cups granulated sugar

5 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

¼ cup sour cream

Candied Pecans:

1 cup pecan halves

2 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter

Caramel:

3 tablespoons brown sugar

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare two loaf pans by lightly greasing them with shortening and dusting with flour.

Toast the pecans by placing them in a dry sauce pan over medium heat. Toss and stir constantly. Cool, and then toss with 1 tablespoon flour. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; sift or whisk together to mix. Set aside.

In a large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  While adding the sugar, stop the mixer occasionally to scrape the mixture off the paddle and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula so the mixture blends evenly.

Add eggs one at a time, beating until thoroughly mixed. Add the vanilla along with the last egg. 

With the mixer on low speed, add about ½ of the flour mixture, mix just until the flour is almost completely blended. Scrape the bowl down, and add the sour cream, blending just until mixed. Scrape the bowl down again and then add the remaining ½ flour mixture, mix just until blended, scraping down the side of the bowl as needed. Do not over mix.  Using a large rubber spatula, gently fold 1 cup toasted pecans into the batter.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan

and smooth the surface with the back of a large spoon.

Bake 55 to 65 minutes or until a long toothpick, wooden skewer, or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Place pan on a wire cooling rack to cool for 10 or 15 minutes then remove cake from the pan and place the cake on the wire cooling rack to finish cooling.

Candied Pecans:

Melt butter over Medium-High heat. Add pecans and toss to coat.
Add sugar, and stir until caramelized, approximately 3-5 minutes. Stir and watch constantly, because they can turn quickly and burn. Spread on wax paper and cool.

Caramel: 

Combine the sugar, butter and corn syrup. Heat to a boiling and stir constantly. Cook about 3 or 4 minutes. (This sauce is not supposed to be a brown and thick caramel. It is supposed to be used as the “glue” to adhere the candied pecans to the cake. Re:picture)

Once the cake has cooled some, start “gluing” the candied pecans on the top of the loaf cake with the caramel sauce. Don’t worry about having chunks or clusters of pecans, just attached them with the caramel. I also used the remaining caramel as decoration. I reheated the caramel and put it in a plastic bag, cut the corner and piped the caramel over the cakes. 

ENJOY!

These made their way to Columbia,

and one traveled on to the beach! :-)