Lemon Pound Cake Loaf

How to Make Moist Lemon Pound Cake

• Measure your ingredients correctly: I highly recommend using a digital kitchen scale to measure your ingredients, especially your flours. It’s SO easy to accidentally compact too much flour into your measuring cups, which will result in dry, lackluster pound cake. If you don’t have a scale, use the spoon-and-level method instead.
• Don’t reduce the sugar: It might seem simple to lower the sugar to cut sweetness, but this impacts more than you might expect. Lowering the sugar will impact the texture, structure, and more. Learn more about sugar’s role in baking here.
• Eggs and Sour Cream: These ingredients are crucial to this recipe, assisting in creating a rich, moist, and tender loaf. Feel free to use full-fat plain unsweetened yogurt instead of sour cream. I don’t recommend using an egg replacement unless you’re up for some experimenting.
• Butter: We’re using plenty of butter in this pound cake recipe, for a beautifully moist, buttery loaf with the best flavor AND texture. I always recommend using unsalted butter in baking. I have not tried any butter substitutes here.

Do I Have to Use Cake Flour?

This recipe uses half all-purpose flour and half cake flour for the best of both worlds. When using only all-purpose flour, the loaf had more of a muffin texture. When using only cake flour, the loaf was too delicate and crumbly.

While you can use only all-purpose flour, I highly recommend using real cake flour for the best texture here. Learn more about cake flour (and why I don’t use DIY substitutes) here.

Why Does This Loaf Recipe Require a Blender or Food Processor?

Like all pound cakes, this is a high-ratio cake, meaning there’s as much or more sugar than flour. This provides a beautifully moist tight-crumbed texture without needing to cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer.

Instead, a blender or food processor not only assists in making quick and easy work of making this batter, but it also helps emulsify all the rich ingredients together into a smooth batter.

The last ingredient is the melted butter, which must be drizzled in a steady stream as the blender or food processor runs to perfectly emulsify.

Can I Use a Different Sized Pan?

This recipe uses a 9 x 5-inch light-colored metal loaf pan for best results.

To Bake in a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch Pan:

• Add about 5 minutes to the baking time. This is the pan I use for smaller loaves. Loaves baked in this slightly smaller pan will rise higher and look taller, more like what you’d see in a bakery case.
• If you use an even smaller pan, you may run the risk of the loaf overflowing, or collapsing slightly in the center, especially if you live at higher altitudes.

To Bake in a Bundt Cake Pan:

• Double all ingredients and bake in a well-greased 10 to 12 cup bundt pan and bake for about 50 to 60 minutes.
• OR, use my Lemon Bundt Cake recipe, which is lighter and more cakey than this pound cake recipe.

To Bake in Glass or a Ceramic Pan:

• I tested this recipe in a metal pan because it conducts heat quickly and efficiently.
• Glass and ceramic don’t conduct heat as effectively, so if you use this style pan, decrease the baking temperature to 325°F and increase your baking time by about 10 minutes.
• Check out my article on Glass vs. Metal Pans. 

The Lemon Glaze for Pound Cake

Be sure to wait until your Lemon Pound Cake is completely cooled before glazing, to avoid the glaze absorbing or melting.

Note: The consistency of your glaze will depend entirely on the brand of powdered sugar you’re using and how humid it is in your kitchen. Here’s how to tweak the glaze as needed:

• To Make the Lemon Glaze Thinner: Add more lemon juice or milk, 1 teaspoon at a time.
• To Make the Lemon Glaze Thicker: Add more powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon at a time.

More Lemon Recipes You’ll Love:

• Glazed Lemon Cookies – my favorite lemon cookies!
• Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
• Lemon Cheesecake
• Raspberry Lemonade Cheesecake Bars
• Lemon Yogurt Zucchini Bread