The 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Classic Pound Cake That Melts in Your Mouth

A thick slab of a well-made classic pound cake is a thing of beauty on its own, but also a wonderful canvas for a dusting of powdered sugar, dollops of whipped cream, or the season's best fruit. With a crumb as smooth as marble, it's dense to the point of creamy, and silky as it melts on your tongue. The whole thing is enclosed in a golden crust that peaks so high it splits down the middle as it bakes.

Growing up, I ate pound cake often. My mom, though busy with her career and raising three children, was an avid home cook and baker, and would somehow still find time to bake a pound cake—using a recipe from her own mother, who was also a working parent—almost every Friday night through the winter, when my brother, sister, and I craved the lingering smell of fresh cake coming from a warm oven.

Our family’s pound cakes would sit on a cutting board, loosely wrapped in tinfoil, and live there through the weekend, ready to be sliced and portioned as we pleased for dessert, or served with afternoon coffee for family visitors who might pop by. By Monday morning only a few crumbs would remain. It’s the ideal easy dessert for a busy parent (or really any busy person) to whip up—it's made from ingredients most people already have in their fridge or pantry and it's incredibly simple to mix together, dump into a loaf pan, and bake.

My grandma’s recipe, and many older recipes for pound cake, call for equal weights—a pound each—of sugar, butter, eggs, and flour, hence the name. Most traditional recipes include no added leavening, and their rise relies on the air naturally trapped in the batter through proper creaming and mixing. And because classic pound cake recipes don't have any added liquid (no milk or cream, for example), the batter turns out especially thick, eager to dome up in the oven, creating its signature craggily split top. 

Even though my mom made it look so effortless, baking a perfect pound cake as described above can come with its challenges. Baking the thick, dense batter in a tall, deep loaf pan so that the interior bakes at the same rate the exterior browns requires a foolproof technique so that you aren’t left with a crumbly dry cake or burnt crust.

With a few strategic tweaks to my family’s recipe, the pound cake I'm sharing the recipe for here has the qualities I love (golden crust, fine crumb, big crown) and avoids the issues that contribute to pound cake's biggest problem—a tendency toward dryness. Read on to learn about the key techniques I use to make a perfect pound cake and to get the full recipe. 

Key Techniques for Making a Memorable Pound Cake

Start with room temperature ingredients. This is a standard rule for most cake recipes, including pound cake. Starting with softened, room temperature ingredients allows for a smoother, more evenly blended batter by enabling ingredients like butter and eggs to incorporate air more easily, resulting in a lighter, fluffier texture in your final baked good. If you start with cold butter, or incorporate cold eggs into the batter, the cold ingredients won’t combine fully, which will lead to a clumpy batter, ruining the emulsion and aeration you want to achieve when creaming the butter and sugar and whipping the eggs. 

Cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly. As former Serious Eat’s senior editor Stella Parks points out in her article on why to cream butter and sugar, adequately creaming the butter and sugar traps air bubbles in the batter; as the cake bakes in the oven, these bubbles expand, helping the cake rise. Without those air bubbles, butter and sugar form a dense paste that gives cakes the texture of a wet brick. Butter is best beaten at cool room temperature—ideally 65ºF or 18ºC—when it's soft but not overly so. At this temperature, butter is pliable enough to beat with the sugar, which aerates the batter.

Add a touch of baking powder to leaven the batter. As noted above, most traditional pound cake recipes do not call for added chemical leaveners. The cakes get their rise just from the air that's trapped in the batter when you cream the butter. But I have found that even with proper creaming, pound cake can sometimes not get the ideal lift, resulting in a squat cake that has a squished, spongy texture towards the bottom.

To avoid the risk of this, I use a small amount of baking powder to guarantee the proper rise so the cake has an even texture from top to bottom. By its nature, baking powder won't release the bulk of its carbon dioxide until warmed above 140°F (60°C), which takes a rather long time in a super-dense pound cake. In this recipe, that means the baking powder provides a late-stage release of carbon dioxide that'll help give the cake its final lift to create the desired split top.

Add a small amount of milk. Similar to baking powder, adding liquid beyond eggs to pound cake is not traditional. Pound cake has a tight, smooth crumb structure, and to achieve this you need a thick batter that won’t fluff or move too much as it bakes. Any added liquid would thin the batter, creating a lighter more aerated texture, too similar to a layer cake, which you don’t want here. But, I have found that adding just a small amount of milk to the batter adds richness and enhances the cake's velvety texture. It adds just a hint of moisture to guarantee the cake melts in your mouth without compromising its signature dense texture.

Don’t overmix the batter. While pound cake has a tighter crumb in comparison to other cakes such as layer or sponge cakes, it should never be tough. The easiest and most foolproof way to avoid a tough cake is to not overmix the batter. Add the flour in three additions, and wait until each addition is just incorporated before adding more. As soon as the flour is just incorporated, stop the mixer. If you keep mixing once all the flour is incorporated, you will over-develop the gluten protein in the dough, which will create a chewier, more bread-like texture—something you want to avoid.

Use the right size pan. Unlike layer cakes—which have a thin batter that will rise dramatically as the cake bakes, so you should never fill the pan more than halfway with batter—pound cake batter is thick and will stretch and rise less dramatically. This means you should fill the pan within an inch of the top to ensure the finished cake has a prominent crown. Using a 9- by 5-inch or an 8 1/2- by 4 1/2-inch loaf pan will ensure this. Using a bigger pan will lead to flat-topped loaves.

Grease and flour the pan. When baking any type of cake, it’s always crucial to grease the pan well with either softened butter or cooking spray before adding the batter. This ensures the cake, once baked, will easily release from the pan without tearing. But when baking pound cake in a loaf pan, you need to go one step further and also lightly flour the pan after greasing. The light dusting of flour provides a textured surface for the dense batter to climb up as it bakes. Flouring the loaf pan is critical to help the cake rise as tall as possible. 

Once the cake is baked, make sure to let it cool before slicing it. Cutting into a piping hot cake may be tempting, but this can create a dense, gummy texture.  When the cake is ready, serve it up however you like—on its own along with a cup of coffee or tea, with ice cream, or as a vehicle for fresh berries. My favorite way to enjoy it is to slather a thick slice with butter, toast it until the butter seeps in and the edges are golden and toasted, then cut it into bite size cubes to eat while still warm.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325°F (160°C). Generously butter a 9- by 5-inch (or 8 1/2- by 4 1/2-inch) loaf pan; dust pan liberally with flour and knock out excess flour.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour and baking powder to combine; set aside. In a 2-cup liquid measuring cup or medium bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla until combined; set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and salt on medium-high speed until shiny, smooth, and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down bowl as needed. Reduce speed to medium and gradually pour in sugar (this should take about 60 seconds). Once all sugar is added, increase speed to medium-high and beat until mixture is fluffy and almost white in color, 5 to 8 minutes, scraping down bowl as needed.

Reduce speed to medium and gradually add egg mixture in slow, steady stream (this should take 60 to 90 seconds). Scrape down bowl. Increase speed to medium-high and beat mixture until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes (mixture may look slightly broken).

Stop mixer and scrape down bowl. On low speed, add 1/3 of the flour mixture, beat until just combined, then add milk and beat until combined. Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture, beat until just combined, then repeat with remaining flour. Scrape bottom of bowl to ensure that batter is homogenous.

Transfer batter to prepared loaf pan and smooth surface with rubber spatula. Bake until golden brown and wooden skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes (see notes). Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes. Invert cake onto wire rack, then turn cake right side up. Let cake sit on wire rack until mostly cool, at least 1 hour. Slice and serve.

Special Equipment

Stand mixer with paddle attachment, 9- by 5-inch or 8 1/2- by 4 1/2 -inch loaf pan

Notes 

If the top of the pound cake starts to turn too dark before the center of the pound cake is fully cooked, loosely cover the top with a piece of aluminum foil and let finish baking until center of the cake is fully baked.

Make-Ahead and Storage

Leftover cake can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.