Hello friends! Today I’m going to share with you how to make this incredibly tender whipping cream pound cake recipe.
This melt in your mouth whipped cream pound cake is based on a one I’ve been playing with and modifying for years. You can find that original pound cake recipe on my site.
And since vanilla is the main flavoring of this cake, you may find my post about taste testing the different kinds of vanilla interesting as well.
If you’re a pound cake super fan like me, you can find all my pound cake recipes in one place on the blog.
I was sent samples by our generous sponsor companies. All opinions are my own. You can find the sponsor list at the end of this post.
Watch my best whipped cream pound cake recipe web story here.
Modifications to My Master Pound Cake Recipe
Should you care at all, I wanted to let you guys know that this is the second version of my famous-in-my-own-mind pound cake.
The first version of my pound cake recipe is pretty excellent as is, but I made a couple of modifications:
- I used a mixture of 2 parts white sugar and 1 part brown sugar (I used Summer Dessert Week’s sponsor, Dixie Crystals Brown Sugar)
- For the original 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) of half and half, I substituted 3/4 cups half and half and 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, whipped just until it was thick.
Why Use Whipping Cream in a Pound Cake
The short answer is because, in her fabulously approachable-yet-sciencey book, Bakewise, Shirley Corriher told me to.
The longer answer is that the gently whipped cream not only adds additional fat for tenderness, but it also contributes to the crumb structure because of all the wee tiny bubbles you whisked into it.
In other words, it boosts the creaming of the butter and sugar in the creaming method, adding extra bubbles that will expand in the oven.
This leads to a tight, even crumb structure that is just about perfect. See?
How to Make Pound Cake From Scratch
With so many “hands and pans” videos out there showing you how you can dump all the ingredients for a cake in a bowl and mix them up, I am here to tell you that’s not the best way to make a cake.
Yes, you’ll end up with a cake, but dumping everything in together gives you no control over the crumb structure of the cake–how fine or how coarse–and that has everything to do with how the cake melts in your mouth, or doesn’t.
Since a pound cake is all about the balance between tenderness and structure, it pays to know how to make that balance pay off.
What You Need
Here are the ingredients you need, and what they do in your recipe. You may also want to take a look at my posts about Ingredient Function to understand a little of the “why” behind “how” to make a cake from scratch.
- cake flour (structure) You may also substitute all-purpose flour here. The texture of the crumb will be slightly less tender, but not appreciably so
- baking powder (leavening) Do NOT substitute baking soda. Since there is only a tiny bit of acidic ingredients (the molasses in the brown sugar) you do not need baking soda to balance it
- butter (tenderness, flavor, browning) Use unsalted butter here, at cool room temperature
- sugar (tenderness, sweetness, browning, moisture)
- extracts (flavoring) You may use all vanilla if you don’t want to add the lemon and almond extracts. I like to use a mixture of the three because it adds a bit of complexity to the cake, but it would be excellent as just a “vanilla pound cake.” If you want to make an almond pound cake, leave out the vanilla and lemon extract and use 1 teaspoon almond extract. Don’t try to turn this recipe into a lemon pound cake, though. Use my recipe.
- salt (flavor enhancer) I use fine sea salt. You can also use table salt if that’s all you have. You can use kosher salt, but you will have to increase the amount since kosher salt doesn’t pack as tightly as fine salt does
- eggs (structure, browning): 5 large eggs
- half and half (moisture)
- heavy cream, lightly whipped (moisture, additional fat for tenderness, and extra air bubbles for a tight, velvety crumb)
What to Do
For best texture and structure, you will use the creaming method to make this cake. In short, here are the steps.
- Cream butter until smooth.
- Add sugars, salt, and extracts and cream until light and fluffy.
- Beat the eggs together and drizzle very slowly into the butter/sugar mixture until well incorporated.
- Alternate adding dry ingredients with the half and half, beginning and ending with dry.
- Whip cream just until thick then fold into your batter.
Tips for Success
The most critical thing to do is to make sure that all your refrigerated ingredients (butter, half and half, and eggs) are at cool room temperature.
For the most stable foam from your cream, you’ll want to keep your heavy cream chilled and whisk it straight from the fridge.
The amount is small enough that folding in the cold cream at the end of mixing should not make the butter seize up.
For the most stable batter, rather than adding one whole egg at a time, whisk the eggs all together and then drizzle them in slowly. This will help you build your emulsion slowly, resulting in a thick and billowy batter.
How Long Does Pound Cake Last?
Pound cake is one of those amazing kinds of cakes that get better with age. To a point.
A pound cake tends to get more moist (moister?) as it sits on the counter.
I used to love having a slice of my mom’s dark chocolate pound cake after it had been in the old cake keeper for a few days. The bottom half would slowly turn from “just chocolate” to fudgy and wonderful. So good, if you can wait that long!
Well covered, you can keep and enjoy a good pound cake for 5-7 days.
If you don’t think you’ll be able to work your way through that much cake in that amount of time, freeze a portion of it. Well-wrapped, it will be fine in the freezer for a couple of months.
How to Freeze
Pound cake freezes very well. If you don’t want to freeze the entire cake, you can bake it, allow the cake to cool completely, and then cut the portion you want to freeze into individual slices.
Here are two ways to freeze your sliced pound cake:
- Stack the slices with a piece of parchment in between each slice, place inside heavy duty zip top bags, pressing out as much air as possible before sealing, OR
- wrap stacks first in 2 layers of plastic wrap and then a layer of heavy duty aluminum foil.
The well-wrapped slices of pound cake should keep just fine for up to 3 months.
Remove slices as needed and let thaw on the counter, microwave for 20 seconds to thaw, or even toast the slices in your toaster oven.
Serving Suggestions
Never let it be said that pound cake is plain, y’all.
Serve it with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream, or for contrast, chocolate ice cream.
Use it as the base for a traditional English trifle. In that case, it’s easiest to bake in loaf pans so you can easily cut it into rectangles. And leave off the glaze.
If you have any questions about this or any other recipe or post on the site, there are a few ways to get in touch.
You can leave a comment on the post, and I’ll be back in touch within 24 hours.
If your question is more pressing, don’t hesitate to email me, and I should be back in touch within 4 hours (unless I’m asleep) or often much more quickly than that.
Ingredients from Sponsors
To make my whipping cream pound cake, I used brown sugar from Dixie Crystals, lemon extract from Adam’s Extract & Spice, and sprinkles from both Wilton and Sweets & Treats Boutique.
Please visit our sponsors and scroll down below the recipe so you can enter for chances to win one of five great prize packages!
Sprinkles Make Decorating Easy
If you want your whipping cream pound cake to have a bit more flair than just a glaze will give it, consider decorating that guy with sprinkles!
I used a mixture of sprinkles from Sweets & Treats, a mixture of just the blue sprinkles and jimmies from Wilton, and then a mixture of all three to show you can get different effects depending on the sprinkles you use.
If you use nothing but red and green sprinkles, this cake would be at home as a Christmas dessert. Green? St. Patrick’s Day!
So have fun with sprinkles and let them lend a bit of personality to your baked goods.
They’re easy to use, just sprinkle them on while your glaze is still wet.
More Pound Cake Recipes for You to Try
As I’ve said, I’m a huge fan of pound cake. I think you will enjoy my Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pound Cake (my ode to an underappreciated Pop-Tart flavor) and my Best Lemon Pound Cake (super lemony!).
If you’re an almond fan, I think you will really enjoy this cream cheese-based almond pound cake. And this decadent chocolate cream cheese pound cake from my friend Lynn who writes for Our State Magazine here in NC will definitely appeal to the chocolate lover!
A Note About Measurements
Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume. Even though I try to always give volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a scale for both accuracy and consistency.
This is the one I use and love:
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
I hope you’ve learned something from this post or that you’ve decided to make the recipe.
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Whipping Cream Pound Cake
This cake will make you happy. Period. Rich, subtly flavored whipping cream pound cake has a meltingly tender crumb that literally does melt in your mouth.
The perfect pound cake to enjoy on its own, as a base for a trifle, or with ice cream and/or sauce on top.
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 13 oz . cake flour (about 3 cups, sifted, spooned, and swept)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 12 oz . cool butter (about 68 degreesF)
- 1 1/4 teaspoons fine sea salt
- 12 oz . sugar (about 2 cups)
- 8 oz . soft brown sugar (about 1 cup, packed)
- 2 teaspoons best quality vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 5 eggs, beaten
- 6 oz . half and half (3/4 cup)
- 4 oz heavy cream, , very softly whipped (1/2 cup before whipping)
For the Glaze
- 2 cups 10x sugar (confectioners sugar or icing sugar)
- pinch of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon
- a couple drops of lemon extract
- a couple drops of almond extract
- heavy cream, anywhere from 6-8 tablespoons, depending on how thick you like your glaze
- Sprinkles of your choice, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Whisk together the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream butter along with the salt until smooth. Add the sugars and beat them together on medium until light and fluffy. Scrape bowl often. This will take about 7-8 minutes or so.
- Add the extract and beat until all is well combined.
- Drizzle in the eggs, a tiny bit at a time, scraping between additions and beating until completely incorporated. This will take about 5-7 minutes.
- Add the dry ingredients and half and half alternately on low speed: dry-wet-dry-wet-dry.
- Whisk cold cream until the whisk leaves tracks and the cream begins to thicken.
- Gently but thoroughly fold the cream into the batter.
- Put in a well-greased and floured 12 cup Bundt pan or tube pan and bake at 350F until deeply golden brown on top and firm to the touch. In my oven, this takes 1 hour and 5 minutes. Start checking at about 50 minutes and loosely tent with aluminum foil if it looks like the top is getting too brown.
- Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack for 20 minutes or so. Make sure the sides are loosened, and then Turn Out onto a rack to cool completely.
- Glaze is optional but lovely. Ditto, sprinkles.
Notes
Nutritional information does not include the glaze.
You can wrap this cake while still warm to keep moisture from evaporating out while it cools, but this cake is so tender and moist already, I usually skip this with this particular pound cake.
Well-wrapped, this cake will keep in the freezer for two months. Thaw, still wrapped, in the fridge overnight and then on the counter until room temperature. Unwrap and glaze.
You can wrap and freeze it with the glaze on it, but frozen glaze tends to get weepy once it thaws out. If you plan on freezing the whole cake, I suggest freezing it without glaze and then glazing it after the cake comes to room temperature.
Recommended Products
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Nutrition Information
Yield 24 Serving Size 1Amount Per Serving Calories 291Total Fat 15gSaturated Fat 9gTrans Fat 1gUnsaturated Fat 5gCholesterol 77mgSodium 223mgCarbohydrates 36gFiber 0gSugar 24gProtein 3g
The stated nutritional information is provided as a courtesy. It is calculated through third party software and is intended as a guideline only.
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amira says
Just to be sure, “soft sugar” means dark one– not Demarara? right?
Thank you.
onlinepastrychef says
Soft brown sugar just means that it should not have any lumps in it. Not sure where you are located, but this could be a semantic issue: in US, brown sugar is “regular” white sugar with some molasses mixed back into it. It has a tendency to get lumpy, so I suggest pressing it through a sieve to get rid of any lumps.
You can use whatever sugar you want, though, as long as the crystals are fine. Demerara and turbinado are both too coarse and will give you a crunchy cake. Depending on the flavorings I plan on using, I use straight white organic sugar, a mix of both white and brown or straight brown.
I hope that answers your question. 🙂
Tara Mitchell (Sweet Sammie's) says
Making this one right now… 🙂
onlinepastrychef says
The Whipped Cream Trick is magical! I think you’ll love it, Tara–enjoy!
Nancie McDermott says
I learned a lot here and I thought I was fancy already cakewise! Beating the eggs and drizzling them in instead of going egg by egg; what particular ingredients do in the cake structure; and that whipping cream to add at the end is a great thing to do. Thanks PCO
Sara says
What a perfectly simple and delicious cake to go with anything! I love how you’re always teaching us things on how to bake (and cook) better! Thank you!
Jennifer Field says
Thank you, Sara! It’s a lovely cake–I do hope you give it a try! I hear it’s especially nice with a cup of coffee! =)
Cindy says
Mixing up the flavors to give this cake a unique taste was really smart!
Jennifer Field says
Thanks, Cindy! I think it makes it a bit more mysterious! 🙂
MJ144 says
Can this be made gluten free? What suggestions would you make
Jennifer Field says
Gluten free is not my strong suit, but I believe most of the commercially made gluten free flour blends can be substituted 1:1 for the wheat flour in most cake recipes. I have heard good things about both Bob’s Red Mill gf flour blend and Cup4Cup. I hope that helps!
Jan Dykema says
can I make this in two loaf pans