Hey Guys, this may be a crazy question, but someone please tell me what dense means and how do you go about making dense cakes. I was contacted by a local church who wants to sell my brownies and pound cake in their cafe. I dropped off samples this morning and was told that my pound cake was not dense enough??? They did like the brownies though. The samples are currently on the way to the pastor for his final word. BTW, I used cake flour and sour cream in my pound cake and everything is at room temperature.

Any suggestions??

Might have been too moist or too light and airy. Dense cakes are sturdier, thicker. Maybe use less sour cream.

Traditionally Pound Cake is just that - - - a pound of flour, butter, eggs, sugar. I use salted butter for this cake. Cream butter and sugar together add eggs slowly beating in between then gradually add the flour. Bake in a greased/floured pan - bundt or loaf etc. at 325-350 degrees and start checking on it about 60 minutes into the baking.

This cake is dense. HTH

You are going to hate me for this, but I bought a scale just for this reason to weight pound cake ingredients then buttercream ingredients. Then I started converting UK recipes from grams measurements and now really love that scale....... so sorry I couldn't be more help.

Is cake flour listed in ingredients? Because cake flour has less protein content and the baked good with cake flour is almost always light and airy and so fluffy.
Try using all purpose flour and see how it turns out, specially King Arthur all purpose flour has a high protein content.
HTH

I agree with Infinitsky using King Arthur flour.

Good catch Infinitsky!

Use cake flour for sponge cake recipes as it will help them become light and airy.

ohh I love this post.. cake flour for light and airy and all purpose for dense... thanks so much... locking this away in the brain.

I make Elvis Presley's favorite pound cake which uses cake flour and it yields a dense but tender cake with a finer/tight crumb than an AP flour recipe does:

http://cakecentral.com/recipes/7317/elvis-presleys-favorite-pound-cake

In fact, I substitute cake flour for any AP pound cake recipe I make for myself. (My twin sister, however, favors AP flour so when making pound cake for her I have to substitute AP for cake flour pound cake recipes).

Terms like dense, airy & lights are very subjective. I know that I've read posts which have used both these terms to describe Rebecca Sutterby's & kakeladi's Original WASC cake recipes..... which I find to be the perfect balance between dense and light & airy.

Traditional scratch pound cake recipes (using either cake flour or AP flour) are dense, but not dense and heavy like some carrot cake or fruit cake recipes can be. (When I think light & airy, I think foam cakes...)

Perhaps the customer would prefer a pound cake made with AP flour which has a larger/more open crumb... Or maybe they're used to cakes that are over mixed and tough - which they may equate with dense.

Perhaps you could ask for a sample of cake they consider suitably dense to see what they're talking about. (And if you do, please let us know what it's like.)

But I can't agree that the sour cream pound cake recipe used isn't dense (tight crumb).

HTH