Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Pound cake is the little black dress of southern baking.  Like a LBD, a pound cake can be casual and plain, or they can be dressed up with flavor, like the lemon cream cheese pound cake recipe I am sharing today.  

Jump to:

• Why is it called “Pound Cake”? 
• Dry Pound Cakes are the Worst
• The Goal: 
• Ingredients: 
• Equipment: 
• How to Become a Southern Pound Cake Lady
• How much Lemon is enough Lemon? 
• Process Notes: 
• Notes on Creaming Butter & Sugar 
• Greasing the Pan
• Troubleshooting: 
• Recipe

 Everyone (and their mama) has a lemon pound cake recipe, some were passed down from generation to generation, while some are modern rifts on the classic.  I can’t tell you how many church functions growing up, ended with a dessert table filled with poundcakes.  Funerals, weddings, potlucks, family reunions, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Somehow magically, there was always a poundcake.   

Why is it called “Pound Cake”? 

The “pound” in pound cake literally means the recipe  includes an actual pound of the basic ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs and flour.  For math purposes, this makes everything so simple, but that simplicity comes with a cost.  Pound cakes are notorious for coming out dry.   If I’m going to spend this many calories (a pound of butter and sugar) then I want the poundcake to be worth it.  Satisfying. Flavorful. But most importantly, not dry. 

Dry Pound Cakes are the Worst

Even though all pound cake recipes have a similar structure, over the years people have tinkered with the recipe and passed those tweaks down.  One of the most awkward things in the world is to have someone boast about making their granny’s pound cake, only to find it’s dry. 

I literally have the worst poker face in the history of the world and when  I am faced with a  pound cake that happens to be dry, things can go sidewides.  *Insert Chrissy Tiegen meme here*  Can someone tell me what to do?   Because the answer is not to say “it’s a little dry”.  For the record, that is the wrong thing to do.  I think some people manage to choke down the whole slice to save feelings. 

Listen: A dry cake happens to the best of us.  Cake fails to happen to me all the time, even when I have a recipe memorized.  Failing is a part of the process. I usually snap a quick picture, take a couple of notes on what went wrong and then tweak my process to try to reach the Southern Pound Cake Lady Status. 

The Goal: 

Produce a wonderfully moist (do people still hate the word “moist”?) pound cake, packed with a fantastically fresh lemon flavor. 

Ingredients: 

• cream cheese
• unsalted butter
• granulated sugar
• Large eggs
• all purpose flour
• lemon extract
• lemon juice
• lemon zest from one lemon

Equipment: 

• Stand mixer
• Measuring cups/spoons or kitchen scale
• 2 9x5 loaf pans or 1 12-cup bundt pan
• Baker’s Joy and/or parchment paper
• Small Bowl
• Whisk
• Lemon Juicer
• Small microplane
• Flexible spatula

How to Become a Southern Pound Cake Lady

1. Practice.  To reach Elite Southern Pound Cake Lady status, you have to get the hang of the art of baking pound cakes.  The more pound cakes you make the more chances you have to mess up. That is how you learn. 
2. Join a group of people who love making pound cakes.  I joined Black Peoples Pound Cakes on Facebook.  And listen, the people in that group are serious about pound cakes.  You will learn so much just following along. 
3. Use the best butter you can afford.  I love nothing more than paying $2.50 for butter from the discount store because I experiment a lot, so I want to keep my expenses down, however the cheaper the butter, the less milk fat, which means your cake won’t have as much moisture as it could. 
4. Bake Low and Slow.  I’ve found that a 350ºF oven is too hot for pound cake.  By reducing the oven temp to 300ºF for 1 hour and 25 minutes, you build a solid crust on the pound cake without over drying the cake.  1 hour and 25 minutes seems insane, but it is worth it, when you are enjoying a nice slice of lemon pound cake. 

How much Lemon is enough Lemon? 

Flavor is everything.  I love lemon pound cake, but I don’t love it when the pound cake tastes like what I imagine lemon pledge tastes like.  This recipe uses three forms of lemon flavor to reach the maximum lemon flavor without it tasting fake.  So we’ll use lemon extract, a lot of lemon zest and a bit of lemon juice. Then we add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to counter balance all that lemon. The result is a fragrant and flavorful cake. 

Process Notes: 

Everything needs to be room temperature!  

When I say “everything” I mean the cream cheese, butter and eggs.  Set out the butter, cream cheese and eggs on the counter  2 hours before you are ready to make the pound cake. My MIL puts her cream cheese on the counter before she goes to work, works a full day and then comes home and bakes the cake. That might be a tad bit extreme,  but no one has ever died from her pound cake. 

 If you’re in a time crunch here are a couple short-cuts: 

1. Eggs. Put all of the eggs in a large measuring cup or bowl and cover with warm water.  Don’t use hot water thinking that will speed this process up even more.  It won’t.  Let the eggs sit in the water while you’re measuring the rest of your ingredients.  
2. Butter.  Unwrap the butter and cut into roughly 2 tablespoons slices.  Place the slices on a microwave safe plate. Microwave the butter in 5-7 second increments. 
3. Cream Cheese.  Unwrap the cream cheese block and place it on a plate. Microwave cream cheese in 7-10 second bursts.  I try not to microwave cream cheese if at all possible– because the smell of warmed cream cheese is low key gross.  I’d rather push back my start time instead of rushing. 

Notes on Creaming Butter & Sugar 

When I did the Great Pound Cake Challenge, there were a few cakes that required a long mixing time.  My opinion is that the mixture needs to be fluffy, light and the sugar completely dissolved, but it doesn't need to take forever. If you’re using a stand mixer, set a timer for 4 minutes and mix on a medium speed.  After the timer goes off re-evaluate. 

Greasing the Pan

Don’t set yourself up for failure by not spending the time up front preparing your baking dish.  You want to make sure that the cake easily flips out of the baking pan.  The best way to do this is to use a baking cooking spray, like Baker’s Joy or Pam’s Baking Spray.  If you don’t have baking spray, you can take a stick of cold butter and grease the pan with the butter and dust the pan with a little all purpose flour.    If you are using a fancy designed bundt pan, use more spray or butter than you think is reasonable.  You should feel like you went overboard before you stop greasing the pan.  

Troubleshooting: 

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