by Ken Tuccio

In my opinion there is no fatter sounding pastry than Pound Cake.

When discussing Pound Cake you can’t help but sound like the type of dude who lounges around the house all day in sweatpants, relying on Wii Fit as his workout regimen. Pound Cake simply sounds unhealthy. It sounds like the type of pastry that would put you to sleep and cause your breathing to become labored.

That being said, Pound Cake rocks.

I’ve had a love for Pound Cake since I was a child. My Grandmother would regularly bake a brick of the cake and bring it over my house. On many occasions this caused a young Ken Tuccio to choose eating Pound Cake and playing Tecmo Bowl over going outside and playing actual sports.

My love for Pound Cake hasn’t wavered over the years; I still love the stuff. I don’t eat it as often anymore, because it’s not as readily available in stores, and I don’t have the culinary skills to whip one up on my own.

Thus, I was horribly excited when I saw this on the grocery store shelf …

Hostess Pound Cakes, all the unhealthy goodness I remember as a child, individually wrapped, and ready to eat.

It’s easy to miss this box when browsing through the pastry isle of your local supermarket. While many pastry boxes are donned with cartoon characters and cool fonts, the Hostess Pound Cakes box is rather generic; but that’s the way it should be.

Pound Cake doesn’t need some animated mascot, or fancy bold font to sell itself; the reputation of the pastry does that. Plus, the awesomely delicious pictures of the Pound Cake on the box is enough to make even the most anorexic girl in the world want to take a bite.

Like most Hostess snack cakes, each Pound Cake comes packaged in it’s own plastic wrapped fortress …

Even wrapped up in miniature form, the Pound Cake is calling to me. I’m running through memories in my head of what it was like to chow down on Pound Cake as a child, and I’m anxiously awaiting the opportunity to sink my teeth into a Hostess created loaf …

The little yellow cakes look absolutely delicious, and physically remind me more of homemade cornbread than the Pound Cake I have such fond childhood memories of. They do exert that “unhealthy pastry smell” though, which is something that makes my Pound Cake eating anticipation up tenfold.

Obviously I didn’t go into this expecting the Pound Cake to taste as amazing as my Grandmother’s homemade loafs used to, but I’ll be damned if they weren’t damn near as awesome.

The Hostess Pound Cakes melted in my mouth, and it’s taking all sorts of restraint to not eat every piece of cake that came individually wrapped in this generically decorated cardboard box.

Amazingly, these tasted homemade, which is a surprise since they came from the same folks who made Banana Creme Filled Twinkies. These taste exactly what my Grandmother’s used to taste like after they were left to cool. Those memories are filling my heart with nostalgia, while the Pound Cake fills my arteries with crap that may kill me in 10 years.

Maybe I’m a little biased, as I’ve been a fan of Pound Cake since my youth, but I’d feel safe in recommending this awesome little pastry to anyone who’s looking for an inexpensive way to feel fat and useless.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m being summoned by my loose sweatpants.