Sour Cream Pound Cake

Sour Cream Pound Cakes are one of those recipes that have been around since the 1905’s when people are flabbergasted with cakes that weren’t just simple sugar, fat and flour.

Adding sour cream to cake batter or cream cheese to coffee cake, even mayo cake, was seen as out-of-the-box.

 

Pound Cake Recipes

Classic Pound cakes, as a rule, are a little heavy. If you want a light, moist crumb, this isn’t your go-to cake. But when you need a comforting buttery dessert, they hit the spot. 

They got their name because the original ingredient list was simple. One pound of butter, one pound of sugar and one pound of flour with a few eggs. Hence, pound cake. You never need to write it down! 

But with no leaveners or other flavors, this also meant they were heavy and needed to be accompanied by sauce or fresh fruit. Since, many variations of pound cake have emerged. 

Sour Cream Pound Cake Recipe

Sour cream helps to lighten the cake and keep it moist, but this cake inherently doesn’t have much flavor. It isn’t supposed to. It is supposed to be a fairly lightly flavored cake perfect for serving with coffee or tea.

Sauces, fruit and powdered sugar are what add to taste and texture and those possibilities are endless! You can even substitute another type of extract for vanilla if you are going in that direction.

Butter, lemon, rum and almond are my personal favorites. These can also be incorporated into an easy glaze if you don’t want to use powdered sugar.

Ingredients 

The ingredients for sour cream bundt cake are pretty straightforward and simple. Standard as far as cakes go. 

• Unsalted Butter – Salt dries things out and brands can vary on salt content. Always bake with unsalted and then add salt as needed. Also, don’t skimp with cheap butter- it is the base for the is cake. Use a good grade A butter. Room temperature butter is always easier to work with.
• Sugar – This is a rich cake, but not an overwhelming sweet cake. While it seems like a lot of sugar, this is also a LARGE cake and needs to balance out unsweetened cocoa. 
• Eggs – Creates structure and stability in the finished product. 
• Vanilla extract – use a good quality vanilla extract, not the imitation stuff. 
• Sour Cream – Use full fat! The addition of sour cream adds moisture without thinning out the batter and also fat that gives it creamy texture and activates the baking soda.
• Flour – Proteins that make up gluten and thus, structure and stability. All purpose flour works best here.
• Baking Soda – Leavener to add fluff and neutralize acids.
• Salt – Salt is essential in baking to bring out natural flavors and provide acidity. 

How to Make the Best Sour Cream Pound Cake

1. Prepare oven and pan. Preheat oven and grease a bundt cake pan with vegetable shortening and flour the pan with 2 tablespoons flour, tapping out excess.
2. Soft flour mixture. Sift together flour, fine sea salt and baking soda. Please in a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream butter. In a large bowl or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachments, beat butter for 3-4 minutes or until it pales and is light and fluffy.
4. Add sugar and eggs. Add sugar and continue to beat for 1 minutes. Then add eggs, one at a time, until yolk just disappears.
5. Sour cream and vanilla. Add sour cream and vanilla extract, mixing until just combined.
6. Incorporate dry ingredients. In small increments, add dry ingredients until just mixed. Pour into prepared bundt pan.
7. Bake. Place in the center of your oven and bake. Insert a toothpick into the center of the cake to check for doneness.
8. Cool. Remove and cool on a wire rack. Invert, tap the outside a few times with a wooden spoon, then release and flip.
9. Add toppings. Allow cake to cool completely before dusting with powdered sugar and garnishing with fresh fruit.

Decorative Bundt Pans

They are so pretty. Ones that depict lovely winter scenes of ice skaters or have intricate lacework.

But know that the pretty cake might be harder to achieve than you think. Small peaks and intricate pictures also mean overcooked cake batter that is dry and crusty.

They are also harder to grease and flour- getting into small spaces. Use a pastry brush to help you out. Know the flour might cake in there too, preventing batter from filling it and thus leaving you with an incomplete pattern.

I have a few swirly ones I’ll use, but I make mine pretty with sauces, powdered sugar, glazes and fruit garnish. It is safer and tastes better.

It is also a good tip to make cakes in the size and shape of pan that the recipe was intended. Using a tube pan for a loaf recipe could result in disaster and vice versa.

Pound Cake Glaze

I opted for just a confectioners sugar (powdered sugar) dusting and served caramel sauce on the side for this batch, however you can also choose to glaze it.

The simple cake glaze is just a mixture of 2 cups powdered sugar with 1 tablespoon milk and 1 tablespoon flavored extract. Vanilla is the most standard, but mix it up with rum, coconut, lemon or even butter for ultra velvety taste.

Mix together right before you are ready to ice, which should be after the cake is fully cooled. Then drizzle on top and allow to set or serve immediately.

Glaze will be tacky, so feel free to add small, lightweight embellishments at this stage.

Tips for BEST Pound Cake 

I’m not assuming you don’t know how to bake, but just skim these over as a refresher. This is a condensed version, check out my whole list for more details. 

• Measure wet and dry ingredients properly
• Use high quality sugar with a large grain
• Use grade A butter with little water and liquid fat
• Make sure all ingredients are room temperature
• Avoid over mixing
• Use the size cake pan stated in the recipe
• Grease your pans with vegetable shortening
• Make sure you have the right oven temperature
• Tip it out of the mold while warm (but not hot)
• Allow to cool fully before adding sauce or icing

Sour Cream Pound Cake Toppings

Now you have a delicious, buttery pound cake- you need to make it extra special. Grab a cup of coffee of cup of tea and use these ideas:

• Flavored Syrups – Consider basting your cake with a flavored simple syrup while it is still warm. It keeps it moist and absorbs right in.
• Fruit Sauces and Jams – Fresh raspberry sauce, cherry jam– anything sweet with fruit is going to tastes amazing!
• Fresh fruit – Fruit salad on top of cake, anyone? Fresh berries or any side of fresh fruit would pain perfectly with this traditional pound cake and even more with our favorite fruit salad dressing.
• Dessert sauces – Fudge sauce, caramel, condensed milk caramel sauce (dulce de leche) or pecan praline– they are all amazing drizzled on top of the cake.
• Stabilized Whipped Cream – Don’t forget the real whipped cream and ditch the hydrogenated oil stuff from the store.
• Ice cream – A scoop of vanilla ice cream makes for the perfect dessert.

Sour Cream Pound Cake Variations

The original recipe is exactly how I like it, but feel free to make it your own. Here are some suggestions:

• Extracts – Play around with the flavors a little bit. You can use almond extract instead of vanilla. You can even add some orange or lemon extract for a tangy flavor.
• Add ins – Feel free to stir some chocolate chips into the batter. Melty chocolate combined with this tender cake would be a great addition.
• Lemon pound cake – You can add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the pound cake batter, as well as make a lemon glaze to go on top to make this a lemon cake.

Amazing pound cake recipes:

• Almond Pound Cake
• Vanilla Pound Cake
• Chocolate Pound Cake
• Berry Buttermilk Pound Cake
• Strawberry Pound Cake
• Key Lime Pound Cake
• Lemon Blueberry Cake