Cold Oven Pound Cake

When I heard about an elderly lady in Johnson City, Tennessee, who used both butter and shortening in her pound cake and started the cake in a cold oven, I couldn’t get the recipe from her fast enough—out of sheer curiosity. “Well, son, this cake’s been in my family for generations,” she began, “and I have no earthly idea why it has to start out in a cold oven. It just does, and if you do it any other way, it won’t turn out real moist and light and good.” No doubt the shortening explains wh