Old Fashioned Pound Cake

Mom’s Old Fashioned Pound Cake is a simple and scrumptious recipe that’s great for any occasion. Made with cream cheese, vanilla, and a whole lot of butter and eggs, this moist and dense cake is easy to make and has the most divine buttery taste!

An Old Fashioned Pound Cake Recipe

The past month I’ve been in a baking rut. A few ideas I had high hopes for were only “meh” in reality, and a few others were just outright fails. Baking is my first love, but I was beginning to think I’d lost my knack for it.

It’s those times of discouragement that force me to scrap all the fancy pants ideas and go back to basics. I love developing my own recipes, but there’s something wonderfully satisfying about picking up an old, worn recipe card and following it exactly. No substitutions, no tweaks, no reworking. Just me and an old favorite, coming to life together in the kitchen.

This time, I turned to a family recipe that’s been loved as long as I can remember: Mom’s Old Fashioned Pound Cake. It had been such a long time since I’d made it, but pulling out the batter stained recipe card was like rediscovering an old friend.

As most pound cakes go, this one is ridiculously easy to make. It only has 7 ingredients including an absurd amount of butter, cream cheese, sugar, and eggs, plus a generous dose of vanilla. They don’t call it pound cake for nothing, friends.

My baking mojo was instantly restored the moment I pulled this from the oven. The cake was golden and dense and smelled like vanilla and childhood. Inside, it was buttery soft with a crumb that absolutely melts in your mouth.

If you need a classic, old fashioned pound cake recipe that’s guaranteed to be a hit, give this one from our family’s treasured collection a try!

Ingredients Needed

• Butter– We use unsalted butter for this recipe. The butter is a primary flavor, so choose the best butter that fits in your budget.
• Cream cheese adds extra moisture and just a little bit of tang. We always bake with full fat cream cheese.
• Sugar– Basic granulated sugar is best for this recipe.
• Eggs– This recipe has a whopping six large eggs! The eggs in pound cake are necessary to leaven the cake.
• Flour- We use unbleached all purpose flour. I am partial to King Arthur Flour’s flour, but any flour should work here. My mom has also tested this with a gluten free cup for cup flour with great results.
• Salt
• Vanilla– We use a whole tablespoon to make sure the vanilla flavor really comes through! As always, we recommend pure vanilla extract, not artificial. If you want even more vanilla flavor, use a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste.

How to Make Vanilla Pound Cake

Step 1: Prep. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and grease and flour your bundt pan.

Step 2: Beat. Beat together butter and cream cheese until smooth.

Step 3: Add the sugar, a cup at a time. Beat on high speed until light in color and fluffy, 4-5 minutes. See the difference in volume from the last photo to this one? That’s what you’re looking for!

Step 4: Add the eggs and vanilla extract, beating well after each addition.

Step 5: Add flour and salt, and beat on low speed until combined, scraping the bowl as needed.

Step 6: Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

*Note: learn from me and use a 12 cup bundt pan. The one pictured is 10 cups. It was too small, and I overfilled it. I’ve tested in a 12 cup bundt pan and it works great!

Step 7: Turn and cool. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Place a wire cooling rack on top of the pan, then flip the cake over onto the rack.

Tips for Perfect Vanilla Pound Cake

• Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly. Because this cake doesn’t have any chemical leaveners (baking soda or baking powder), it gets most of its lift from the air pockets created when you beat butter and sugar and eggs together. Don’t rush this process! It takes a full 5-7 minutes for the butter and sugar to fluff up and turn a lighter color.
• Use Baker’s Joy or heavily grease and flour your bundt pan. We have had great success using Baker’s Joy for all of our bundt cake recipes, but you can also use vegetable shortening or butter and top with a sprinkle of flour. Make sure to get in all the nooks and crannies!

What to Serve with Pound Cake

Vanilla pound cake really needs no accessory, but of course that doesn’t stop us from adding them.

The pound cake could be topped with powdered sugar or served with the strawberry glaze from this strawberry bundt cake or a simple vanilla glaze.

My favorite way to serve pound cake is warm with a scoop of ice cream and smashed and sugared strawberries. Homemade whipped cream is also great instead of ice cream.

My mom loves her pound cake with a smear of cream cheese and fruit jam.

And I don’t want to put any wild ideas in your head, but a slice or two of this grilled and topped with strawberry rhubarb compote would probably be life changing.

FAQS

Why is it called pound cake?

Traditional recipes for pound cake included a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs, and a pound of butter, which is where it got its very fitting name.

Pound cakes don’t have any leavening, instead relying on the air created from beating butter and sugar together as well as a large proportion of eggs to provide lift.

For curiosity’s sake, I measured my ingredients to see how close they are to a pound. Our recipe uses slightly less than a pound each of flour and eggs, and slightly more than a pound of fat and sugar.

The resulting cake is super moist and buttery, with a more dense texture than traditional sponge cake.

Can pound cake be made in loaf pans?

You can definitely make this in a loaf pan if you prefer! You’ll need two 9×5 inch loaf pans for this recipe.

How do you flip a bundt cake?

Place a wire cooling rack on the top of the bundt pan (feet pointing up). Place the palm of one hand flat against the rack, while your other hand slides under the bottom of the bundt pan. Flip the pan over and gently pull it up off of the cake, shimmying slightly side to side if necessary.

The cake should cool for 10-15 minutes before flipping. If the pan is still too hot to hold with your hands, use some grippy hot pads. These are our favorite!

More Old Fashioned Cake Recipes We Love

• Crazy Cake– This depression era sheet cake is so easy to make and makes the most fluffy chocolate cake!
• Carrot Sheet Cake– This is another recipe from my mom. Loaded with pineapple and topped with a cream cheese frosting, it’s a classic for family holidays.
• Rhubarb Upside Down Cake– A very simple upside down cake with a moist, lemony yellow cake and tangy sweet rhubarb topping.
• Chocolate Bundt Cake– We don’t use the term “best” lightly. This is the most moist and delicious chocolate bundt cake around!
• Zucchini Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting– I love the way old fashioned recipes utilize garden produce. Save this one for the late summer zucchini harvest!