Apple Cider Pound Cake

The spring pasture move Sunday. I rode up to the gate at six in the morning and opened it and the cows that had been watching the gate since March moved through it like a slow brown river — fifty-three head, calves at heel, into the new grass. The calves had never seen this pasture. They ran. They bucked. The mothers looked at their calves running and did not chase them; they grazed instead, the way mothers do once they trust that the children are within range and will, eventually, get tired and come back. The pasture move is a good day. It is one of the days you live for as a rancher in Montana. The grass is up. The cattle are out. The winter is over.

Patrick rode the side-by-side up to the gate to watch. He had not been able to ride a horse out for the move this year. He sat in the side-by-side with Mom in the passenger seat and they watched the cows move past and he said, fewer of them than I thought. I said, Dad, the count is fifty-three with calves, total a hundred and twenty-three. He said, Looks like fewer when they are running. Mom laughed. She said, Patrick Gallagher, you have been counting cows for fifty years and you cannot count moving cows. He said, I never claimed to. They sat there for half an hour. They drove back. He went to bed at noon and slept four hours. The morning had cost him. He had been there for it. Both things are true.

I shod four horses Wednesday and Thursday — long days but the weather was beautiful, mid-fifties, the willow leafing out, the meadowlarks back from wherever meadowlarks go. The meadowlarks. I had not heard them in five months and I heard the first one Wednesday morning and stopped the truck on the side of the road for two minutes to listen. The meadowlark song does something to a Montana boy that I cannot account for and that I do not want to. It is a sound that means home and means spring and means the world is starting over. I sat in the truck with the window down and listened and let the bird finish three songs before I drove on. The dispatch of the day could wait two minutes for the meadowlark.

Tara called Friday. Maggie is six weeks. She is sleeping six-hour stretches at night now. Tara has slept six hours in a single block for the first time since November. She sounded like a person. She sounded like the Tara from before pregnancy. She said, Cole and I are coming down next weekend, can you cook a Sunday dinner. I said, Yes. She said, Patrick can hold her. I said, Yes. She said, We will bring food too. I said, You bring nothing. You come and you sit in our kitchen and you eat what is on the table. She said, Okay. Okay, Ryan.

Cooked Sunday a pot of beef stew from the cull cow — last of last fall's shanks, the kind of cut that wants long hours and not much intervention. Three hours covered, one hour uncovered. Carrots from the cellar (the last of them — the new spring carrots will come in May), parsnips from the cellar (also last), pearl onions, a bottle of red wine I do not drink but use, rosemary, bay. Mom's sourdough on the side. The kind of meal that says we have made it through another winter. Patrick had two bowls. Mom had one and a half. I had two. The stew was right. The week was right. Saturday cookout was nine men and the fire was the first one we sat around without Carhartts on. Marcus made one hundred ninety-three days. We had ribs. Vince said, We are not going to need the big coats much longer. I said, Yeah. He said, This is the good time. I said, Yeah. The fire helps. The pasture move helps. The meadowlark helps most of all.

Tara was coming Sunday with Cole and Maggie, and I wanted something at the end of that table to say we made it — the way a good dessert can say a thing the main course cannot. Mom still had a jug of apple cider from October sitting on the cellar shelf with the last of the carrots and parsnips, and I used it. The pound cake is an easy thing to make and a good thing to have when your daughter comes home for the first time since November — sweet without being fancy, the kind of finish that belongs on the same table as sourdough bread and a pot of long-braised beef, in a kitchen where winter is finally over.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 65 min | Total Time: 1 hr 25 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup fresh or unfiltered apple cider
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep pan. Heat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan thoroughly, making sure to coat all the ridges.
Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat softened butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 4–5 minutes. Don’t rush this step — it builds the cake’s texture.
Add eggs. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Combine cider and sour cream. In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the apple cider, sour cream, and vanilla until smooth.
Alternate wet and dry. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the cider mixture in two additions (flour — cider — flour — cider — flour). Begin and end with flour. Mix only until just combined after the last addition; do not overmix.
Fill pan and bake. Pour batter evenly into the prepared bundt pan and smooth the top. Bake 60–70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with only a few moist crumbs. The top should be deep golden and pull slightly from the edges.
Cool and turn out. Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert onto the rack to cool completely — at least 45 minutes — before slicing. Dust with powdered sugar if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Apple Cider Pound Cake — The Sweet End of a Hard Winter