Sharing Love by the Pound
By Nancy Polinsky Johnson
“What do you want me to make for you when you come home?” was the question my mother often asked me on the phone.
Over the course of nearly 40 years, my answer was always the same: “Your pound cake.”
Pound Cake
It didn’t matter if I was driving back to Columbia from Chapel Hill on a college break during the 1970s, or flying in from my adopted home of Pittsburgh with my husband and two sons throughout the 1980s, ’90s, and 2000s. At the end of the journey, I knew my favorite cake would be waiting for me.
Frankly, I don’t know why Mummy kept asking the question. She knew that every pleasure center in my brain lit up when I bit into that oh-so-moist cake with its crunchy, cracked top.
Loaded with butter and cream cheese, the finished product—if Mum timed the baking just right—had a consistency almost bordering on that of a cheesecake. And it developed a hard, thick crust that would inevitably burst open—with flavor, I would argue—creating golden cracks and crevices that held the promise of crumbly deliciousness.
Unlike other pound cakes that might be enhanced by adding berries and whipped cream, or any other number of toppings, I have always believed that this one tastes best when it stands alone, and I have never adorned it with anything that would detract from its pure yumminess.
Mummy got the recipe for the cream cheese pound cake shortly after moving to South Carolina in 1968. She told me years later that it was given to her by a friend named Rose Kline.
I wish I had known Rose to thank her.
I wasn’t the only one in the family who loved the cake. So did my father and my sister, Joanna. After Joanna and I married and had children, our husbands and sons embraced it too, and Mummy rarely made a trip to Pittsburgh, where I have lived since 1985, without a freshly-baked, aluminum foil-wrapped pound cake tucked inside her luggage.
In a rather surprising turn of events, Mummy and her pound cake became somewhat famous in Pittsburgh. It all began in May 1995, when I invited her to be a guest on QED Cooks, a local cooking show I co-hosted on the city’s public television station, WQED. The station was preparing a special Mother’s Day edition of the program, so I asked my mother to make an appearance and demonstrate my favorite of all her delicious recipes.
Mummy, always eager for an excuse to travel north to see her Pittsburgh grandsons, was happy to oblige. Looking beautiful, as always, she stood next to me on the kitchen set and shared her cream cheese pound cake recipe with viewers in a live broadcast.
Joanna Polinsky Berens, Arline Polinsky (OBM) Nancy Polinsky Johnson
The recipe was an immediate hit. I know this because WQED always produced a cookbook to offer in conjunction with each cooking special, as a way of thanking people for their membership support to the public TV station. When Mummy finished making her cake—and I finished raving about it—I told viewers that the recipe was included in the cookbook being offered as a thank you gift that day, and the phone banks absolutely lit up. Everyone wanted that pound cake recipe.
As was the case with all episodes of QED Cooks, that Mother’s Day special ran in reruns for many years, and the segment with my mother was included in several “Best Of…” QED Cooks shows that also aired repeatedly.
It wasn’t long before Arline Polinsky’s Cream Cheese Pound Cake became the most often-requested recipe in the 25-year history of the show, and I couldn’t go anywhere in the city without people stopping me to say they had made the cake and their family loved it. It became routine to hear strangers sing praises of the cake in the checkout line at the grocery store, during intermission at the theater, or while navigating the crowd at a Steelers game. I also got countless notes and letters from viewers who wanted me to know how much they enjoyed the cake.
One note, in particular, that I will never forget was from a woman whose husband had indulged in two pieces of the cake one night and hours later suffered a heart attack. Thankfully, he survived, and she wanted me know that the first thing he requested when he returned home from the hospital was a piece of the cake—a cake that she now called “heart attack pound cake,” due to the three sticks of butter included in the recipe!
After my mother died of COVID-19 in April 2020, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette devoted an entire page and a half to a feature article about her and her pound cake. That amazed me, considering that my mother never lived in Pittsburgh. But it speaks to the impact she made when she shared that recipe on the air 25 years earlier—and to the absolute yumminess of the cake that Mummy was always happy to prepare for me.
Article in Pittsburgh Gazette featuring Arline's Pound Cake
I don’t bake. I have neither the time nor the interest in doing so. But my sister inherited my mother’s love of baking, and every time I visit Joanna in Florida, she has Mum’s cream cheese pound cake waiting. Unlike Mummy, however, she never calls beforehand to ask about making it.
She knows some things never change.
To see the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article referenced here, google “Remembering Mum and Her Pound Cake.” Click here to watch Arline Polinsky prepare her cream cheese pound cake on QED Cooks in 1995.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
As made by—but not originated by—Arline Polinsky
3 sticks of butter
8 ounces of cream cheese
3 cups of sugar
Dash of salt
1½ teaspoons of vanilla
6 large eggs
3 cups of sifted cake flour
Cream the butter, cream cheese, and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add salt and vanilla and beat well.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Stir in flour.
Spoon the mixture into a greased 10” tube pan and bake at 310 degrees about 1 to 1½ hours.