Recently, I asked my Instagram community to share their legacy recipes with me. I described them as the recipes that, if the person who always made them were no longer here, would be deeply missed. The response reminded me just how much of our family history is tucked away in recipe boxes, handwritten cards, well-loved cookbooks, and sometimes simply in someone’s memory.
Family recipes are about so much more than food. They tell us where we came from, who gathered around our tables, and how we cared for one another. A familiar cake can take us back to a grandmother’s kitchen, while a holiday dish can remind us of a table filled with people we love. These recipes become part of the rhythm of our families, passed from one generation to the next.
That is why preserving them matters. When we take the time to write down a recipe, ask questions about how it was made, and learn the little details that may never have been put on paper, we are preserving a piece of someone’s story. One day, those details may be the very things we wish we had thought to ask.
Today, I am honored to share one of those special recipes: a buttermilk pound cake generously shared by Mary, a member of my community. It was her grandmother Dorothy’s recipe. My hope is that by sharing these recipes, we can celebrate the people behind them and encourage all of us to preserve the dishes that tell the stories of our own families.
Because a recipe passed down is more than something we make. It is a way of keeping a place at the table for the people who taught us how to gather there. If you would like to share your family legacy recipe to try and perhaps share with my Home with a Twist community, click here
Buttermilk Poundcake with Buttermilk Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 3 cups sugar
- 2 sticks butter room temp
- 5 eggs room temp
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3/4 tsp soda
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 tsp pure vanilla (not imitation)
Buttermilk Sauce
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 TBL light corn syrup
- 1/4 tsp soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
- Grease and flour a tube pan
- Cream butter and sugar until fluffy
- Add eggs yolks (reserve egg whites). Beat until light.
- Add all the remaining ingredients.
- Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff and fold by hand into batter.
- Pour into the greased and floured tube pan
- Bake 325 for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean
- While the cake is baking make the buttermilk sauce
Buttermilk Sauce
- To a small saucepan set on low heat add sugar and butter
- Add buttermilk, corn syrup, and soda.
- Cook to full rolling boil, stirring constantly to prevent from scorching
- Remove from heat. Add vanilla.
- Pour over cake after you remove it from the oven. Let sit.
- After cake has cooled for a bit invert onto a serving plate.
- Serve with whipped cream
Hospitality is in my DNA. I founded Home with a Twist, a daughter’s twist on her mother’s traditions, in memory of my mother to celebrate her life and the gifts she shared with me. Mother loved to celebrate life’s occasions – big and small.
