My New Favorite Pound Cake
I’ve shared quite a few pound cakes here on the blog, but today’s cream cheese pound cake might just be my favorite. While it looks modest, it’s a nice heavy (but not too heavy!) cake that is anything but plain. The cream cheese adds great depth of flavor and makes the cake so tender. The texture is dense (as pound cake should be) and melts in your mouth. It’s simple, yet so stunning!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Perfectly moist and tender. Follow my tips for avoiding a dry cake, and yours will come out just like the pictures! Takes just 15 minutes to prepare before going in the oven. It’s less complicated than my sour cream pound cake. Low and slow baking allows the center of the cake to finish cooking without over-baking the outside (a common issue with pound cakes!). No decorating needed, thanks to the cream cheese this cake has a lovely flavor that stands alone, but if you want to add a little something extra it pairs nicely with fresh berries and whipped cream.
Ingredients
One of the best things about pound cake recipes is that they use only basic ingredients, and this recipe is no exception. We’ll need only eight ingredients today, read on for more information on the specifics and why I chose each one.
All-purpose flour. I tried this recipe with cake flour (instead of all-purpose) and did not prefer the results that way; the crumb was too fine and felt too dry, almost cottony in the mouth (despite the fact that it was not actually dry or over-cooked). Stick with all-purpose! Baking soda. I don’t normally include leavening agents in my pound cake, but a small pinch of baking soda helped the crumb in this recipe. The cake is still dense, but the baking soda improves the texture. Cream cheese. Make sure you use full-fat, brick-style cream cheese. This is very important! Any other variety (like the spreadable kind sold in tubs) will not work here, just like when making cheesecake or cream cheese frosting. Sugar. I know three cups seems like a lot, and it is–this is a big cake! It’s important that you use this quantity not only for sweetness but also moisture. If you cut the sugar in the recipe, your cake could be dry. Eggs. These should be at room temperature. If yours aren’t, hop over to my post on how to quickly bring eggs to room temperature. This will help the eggs mix into the batter much easier and will yield the silky smooth, velvety batter we are looking for here. My classic pound cake recipe requires cracking into a dozen eggs, when I developed this recipe I tried to cut down on the number needed, so while 6 may seem like a lot, it’s really not so bad in comparison 😉
SAM’S TIP: Grease and flour your pan REALLY well! I have a detailed tutorial of how I do this in my video below. I find it works best to use shortening for the grease part (even though I’m slowly removing shortening from my recipes and from my kitchen) as it does seem to provide better protection against sticking, but you could use butter instead. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Cream Cheese Pound Cake
SAM’S TIP: A toothpick isn’t long enough to reach the center of a cake this big, so use a wooden skewer to test for doneness instead.
What to serve with cream cheese pound cake
We love this recipe plain, it has a beautiful light sweetness to it (the crackly meringue top that becomes the bottom is my favorite part) but if you want to take things to the next level, here are a few great options:
Slice and serve topped with macerated strawberries and homemade whipped cream (or chocolate whipped cream). Serve slices topped with strawberry sauce, lemon curd, raspberry sauce, or blueberry sauce. Top the entire cake with a dusting of powdered sugar, a drizzle of vanilla glaze, or a blanket of decadent chocolate ganache.
Make sure to watch the video below for a special surprise at the end 💕 Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
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