Why I Remain Hopelessly Devoted to Entenmann’s, the Most Factory-Style Bakery Goods Ever

The All Butter Loaf Cake is a culinary cornerstone for my family.

The slogan for Entenmann’s Bakery is “Everyone’s Got a Favorite!”…and they’re not wrong. My best friend is obsessed with the odd-looking Crumb Donuts that combine crumb cake topping with glazed cake doughnuts. My partner will eat an entire box of the chocolate-covered Rich Frosted Donuts. My dad loves the Louisiana Crunch Cake, whose simultaneous softness and crunchiness offers textural delight. My mother and I shared a favorite–the pillowy Cheese Topped Buns, which I now sprinkle raisins onto (to the horror of my sisters) to emulate the dried-fruit-studded version of my childhood.

And that’s only a smattering of the variety of baked goods that this enormous factory—just 20 minutes south of where I grew up, on Long Island, New York—cranked out to the great world beyond. All over the country, you can find everything from moist cinnamon rolls and single-layer dessert or coffee cakes to soft-baked chocolate chip cookies, Danish strips, and, more recently, mini muffin packs and fancies that reflect its New York roots (like rainbow cookies!) in simple white boxes emblazoned with that iconic navy script.

As fancy as some may sound, what brings Entenmann’s products back down to earth is that all of these look exactly as machine-made as you’d expect from a factory whose smokestacks loomed large from local roads. And that was largely the charm.

Nearly perfectly uniform with their hyper-regular crumb toppings, streaky confectioner’s sugar glaze, and toasted mini peaks of dropped-in filling, they were treats for the everyman. Accessible, blue-collar pleasure. And perhaps none more so than the All Butter Loaf Cake.

One Entenmann’s To Rule Them All: All Butter Loaf Cake

Since 1898, when William Entenmann opened his first bakery in Brooklyn, New York, this yellowy pound cake has been a bestseller (more than 700 million sold to date), proving that while everyone does have their favorite, this was the one everyone could agree on—including my entire family.

When I was really young, the All Butter Loaf Cake was a staple of Sundays at my grandparents’ house in suburban Lake Ronkonkoma, where my parents would bring us before rushing off to open up their restaurant up the road. It was one of the rare times all three generations got to gather around the table.

Despite being from a near dairy-free culture, my family loved butter, and this loaf cake always tasted like it had plenty of it. It was my grandpa’s favorite—deemed “not too sweet,” the ultimate compliment a Chinese elder could bestow upon a Western dessert. He and my dad would savor a slice at the kitchen table with a hot cup of makeshift lai cha, or milk tea, a drink that has now hit the mainstream in bubble form. Back in the ‘90s, the closest they could get was Lipton’s English Breakfast with plenty of whole milk stirred in.

Together, it was a perfect fusion of makeshift culture. On the plate, a pillowy texture just familiar enough to liken it to a richer version of sponge cake used in Chinese bakeries, but unmistakably all-American in its buttery glory, despite being stripped of the thick, saccharine American frosting my Chinese family found so off-putting. In the cup, Chinese black tea is given a Western name and Western treatment to simulate a drink popular in Hong Kong—a full circle if I’ve ever heard one.

My grandma has a sweet tooth; back then, she didn’t need the earthiness of tea to bring it back down to earth, preferring to float on that sugar high. She’d cut us generous slices of what she pronounced “bah-dur dahn-go”—“butter cake”—and my mom allowed it. We were usually my grandparents’ for the day on these mornings, so any excess energy the loaf gave us wasn’t her problem.

Entenmann’s Enduring Place at My Family’s Table

When we grew older and my grandparents moved away, Entenmann’s remained a semi-regular treat and an evolved family tradition. Now, one of us (usually designated by my mom) would get to pick out a weekend Entenmann’s treat—anything from a yellow cake thickly slathered with chocolate icing to a pecan strip Danish—but without fail, we would always, also, pick up an All Butter Loaf Cake.

And everyone, I came to learn, had a favorite part of the loaf, too. The first slice—the “butt,” the heel, the end of the cake—always went to my dad. To this day, I don’t know if he’s grown to prefer it because we kids didn’t want it or if he’s just always liked its texture best. (He doesn’t know, either.)

This part has a drier crumble and wavy pattern from the paper liner it was baked in. He always cut his end piece thick enough to make sure he got some bright yellow, soft, sticky texture from the split top that ran down the center.

I always wanted the widest part of the cake. Being one of those kids who wanted the bottom (and only the bottom) crust cut off their sandwiches, my priority was maximizing that golden center, where the rich, buttery flavor was the most concentrated.

I used to pick out the loaf cake I’d bring home based on this dark-to-light ratio, favoring cakes that were a little more golden brown. My mom, on the other hand, who always worried about carcinogens, liked to buy the overall lightest cake on the shelf (there was no scientific basis for this but I was not going to argue with her).  Both of us would peer closely  through the clear plastic film of the windowed boxes Entenmann’s invented in 1959 to make sure that this one tiny variable in otherwise perfectly machinated, uniform batches made it the best of the bunch.

For a brief while, between 2021 and 2023, those iconic boxes lost their peekaboo feature, putting me at a loss on how to select the right cake. Simply grabbing a box blindly off the shelf seemed like a mad gamble. Would it have a gloriously wide, buttery split that touched all the sides of the cake, or would it be a miserly line down the center? Would it be a tinged overbaked, the darker part bubbling up and coming loose? Or underbaked, the “crust” almost dejected in its lack of commitment to browning?

During those years, I’d cross my fingers and knock on wood the way my mom taught me, and hope that she and my grandpa were guiding my hands to the perfect All Butter Loaf Cake from the heavens above, able to see through the cake box material in their now immortal wisdom.

Now that the windows are back, I don’t quite have to say a silly little prayer for their guidance. But I do think of them up there and my father and grandmother down here every time I cut myself a slice and find that the memories, much like the loaf cake, are beautifully simple, wonderfully accessible, and “not too sweet.”

How To Go Beyond All Butter

You may find, like me, that the simple greatness of an Entenmann’s All Butter Loaf Cake is all you need. But why not go the extra mile with such a classic? Here are three ways to elevate the cake even more.

• Strawberry Shortcut: Pound cake has always been a great foundation for a strawberry cake shortcut. Use a fresh loaf of this cake and it’s a winner every time. I love to layer whipped cream and fresh or macerated strawberries on top of a thick slice, and repeat with another and a dollop of strawberry preserves for a no-effort layer cake of my favorite summer flavors.
  
  

• Ice Cream (Meets) Cake: Ice cream is sweet and rich enough…but is it buttery enough? Crumbling a slice of this dense loaf into thick chunks adds texture and flavor to any ice cream. Top a bowl of butter pecan ice cream with some Entenmann’s All Butter Loaf Cake, or use it to soak up some chocolate syrup on classic vanilla. Put it on berry-flavored ice creams for an icebox crumble or balance refreshing mint chocolate chip with the warmth of this cake.
  
  

• Pound Cake French Toast: If this sounds too rich for you, remember, there are people out there living their best lives making French toast with cinnamon rolls. Dip thick slices of this loaf cake into French toast batter, but do it quickly—they’re sturdy and somewhat dense, but absorb moisture fast. Searing it on a skillet will only bring out more toasty buttery elements of the cake, further fudging the sweet line between breakfast and dessert. 
  
  

Read the original article on All Recipes.