Cake Without a Recipe

Food writer Michael Ruhlman's book, Ratio, might just free you from cookbooks forever. Instead of relying on recipes, Ruhlman breaks down cooking into easy-to-understand ratios of ingredients, a method he says allows for more creativity in the kitchen. "When you know a ratio, you don't know a single recipe, you know a thousand," he says. Once you've mastered the basics, you're free to start experimenting by adding or subtracting flavors.

POUND CAKE RATIO: 1 part butter: 1 sugar: 1 egg: 1 flour

"I don't know why people think they can't make a cake," says Ruhlman. "They're ridiculously easy." While it's true almost everyone has made at least one birthday cake, many of us lean on boxed mixes instead of making one from scratch. Ruhlman doesn't approve. "The store-bought kind has no flavor, and is no fun to eat," he says. "The flavor and richness is just unmatched when you use your own eggs, butter, and good flour."

Interestingly, Ruhlman's ratio for pound cake -- equal parts butter, sugar, egg, and flour -- is exactly the same as his ratio for sponge cake, a decidedly lighter product with an airy crumb. How is this possible? It boils down to technique.

"In almost all of baking, the mixing method is more important than the actual ingredients," he says. In the case of cakes, it's the eggs that do most of the heavy lifting (literally). "With the pound cake, you're not trying to develop all kinds of bubbles," he explains. "When you want lots of light airy crumb, you're going to beat those eggs until they're tripled in volume so they're really frothy and will expand when you bake the cake."

But to achieve the moist, heavy texture that's the hallmark of a pound cake, Ruhlman uses what he calls a "creaming method": A small amount of air is incorporated while creaming together the butter and sugar, but the eggs aren't whipped. (Salt and flavorings are left out of the basic ratio, but definitely give the cake added dimension.)

Because of their density (and all of that butter and sugar), pound cakes deliver an intense wallop, so Ruhlman suggests using an icing that balances out the flavors. "A citrus glaze is just awesome," he says. "It gives a sweetness and an acidity to all of that richness." However, if you're the type that likes to go all out, you can tweak the ratio to create a double-chocolate extravaganza, he says. "Just make the cake chocolate by adding some cocoa powder instead of flour," he says. "Then top it with a ganache, which is just cream and chocolate mixed together until the chocolate melts," he says.

A cake that's decadent and easy? Now that's something to celebrate.

From RATIO: THE SIMPLE CODES BEHIND THE CRAFT OF EVERYDAY COOKING by Michael Ruhlman. Copyright 2009 by Ruhlman. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.