The Best Million Dollar Pound Cake Recipe - Miss in the Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

Why did my pound cake fail? ›

Mistake: Overbeating The Eggs

Add eggs, one at a time, beating just until the yolk disappears. Overbeating the eggs may cause the batter to overflow the sides of the pan during baking or create a fragile crust that crumbles and separates from the cake as it cools.

Starting your pound cake in a cold oven also impacts the texture of the cake. A longer bake time and lower temperature allows the leavening more time to work before the cake sets, resulting in a taller, fluffier cake.

"Gently" is key here; overmixing with a heavy hand will cause the batter to deflate, and all your hard work creaming will be reversed. The result will be a dense, tough cake. Use softened butter to grease the entire interior of your loaf pan.

According to Spoon University, over-mixing your cake batter in turn, over-activates the gluten in the flour. Stirring the cake batter both incorporates your ingredients and activates the gluten protein, so when you mix it too much, the texture of your pound cake becomes doughy like bread.

If you overmix cake batter the cake will fall as flat as a pancake once it is removed from the oven. By overmixing you incorporated far too much air into the batter. As the air heated in the oven the cake rose but once it was removed from the oven it did not have the structural integrity to maintain that shape.

Wait until the cake has set to minimize the chance of collapsing as you rotate. Utilize your oven's light to avoid opening the door when checking on your cake. Be super careful not to slam the oven door! Slamming the door can cause the cake to collapse – as can slamming your cake pans down when removing from the oven.

Transfer pan to oven, reduce temperature to 325°, and bake until top is golden and a tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 1 hour, 5 minutes. (Starting at a higher temperature, then dropping down gives the cake a jump-start before allowing it to bake nice and slowly, so it doesn't get too dark.)

Cake Flour: Cake flour is lighter than all-purpose flour and produces the best pound cake in my opinion. Since it's so light, the attention remains on the butter. All-purpose flour is simply too heavy for this pound cake recipe; the cake will be heavy as a brick. If needed, use this homemade cake flour substitute.

Prepare cake pan by coating with butter and sugar. Set aside a different pan filled with a few inches of water (this creates moisture in the oven and prevents the cake from drying out while baking).

Either you filled the cake pan too much and didn't bake the cake long enough. Or your oven needs a new heating element.

How long to leave pound cake in pan? ›

How long do you leave pound cake in the pan? When it's done baking, let the cake sit in the pan for 10 minutes: no more, no less. It's enough time for the cake to firm up some after baking so that it doesn't fall apart, but not so much time that the cake gets stuck to the pan.

Make sure the flour is sifted before you add it to the cake. It's even better if you can sift it AGAIN when you're adding it to the cake, but that's not necessary. This is to reduce the likelihood of flour lumps forming when mixing the flour. If you're able to incorporate the flour with a baking spatula – DO IT!

Bundt pans are a baking essential. Their unique construction allows an even browning on denser cakes, like pound cake, with the well-defined curves that are the hallmark of the form. Bundts now come in the shape of rosettes, castles, and even pine forests.

You used too much leavening.

It seems counterintuitive, but too much leavening can actually cause your cake to fall. This is because the leavening activates too quickly during baking, which causes a turbocharged, too-fast carbon dioxide reaction.

You'll end up with a cake that's too dense and dry. If you're asking about adding flour to a batter, you usually add it in stages, alternating with the liquid. Adding it in two or three steps helps hydrate the flour more quickly and requires less stirring, which prevents gluten formation.

Cover a cracked cake with frosting to hide its imperfection.

Frosting will hide small cracks perfectly. If it's severely cracked, use a little frosting to try to "glue" the pieces back together; do this by spreading the frosting down into the crack and pressing it back together.

The toothpick test

It involves dipping a toothpick or a paring knife into the cake's center to check for doneness. If the toothpick or knife comes out clean, then the cake is well done. If it's still raw in the middle, you'll observe bits and crumbs of the batter sticking to the toothpick.

It's Not Cool Enough

Setting the warm cake pan on a cooling rack helps the cake cool faster, especially on the bottom, where sticking is most likely. If you're in a hurry, you can use the fridge to speed up the cake-cooling process.