Sour Cream Pound Cake (2024)

Sour Cream Pound Cake is a beautifully dense, melt-in-your-mouth cake. This classic recipe uses just eight common ingredients and pairs perfectly with berries and whipped cream. Recipe includes a how-to video!

A Soft, Perfectly Dense Cake

Straight from my grandmother’s archives, this sour cream pound cake is a true gem of a dessert. While I honestly don’t remember her actually making this recipe (hot milk cake is her go-to!), I was excited to find it in her box of recipes and couldn’t wait to try it. It turned out to be an absolute win all around, and I am so excited to give this recipe a home on the blog!

Sour cream pound cake is a dense, but absolutely melt-in-your-mouth cake with a subtle vanilla-flavored crumb. Compared to my regular pound cake, this recipe uses less eggs (specifically egg yolks) and comes out with a lighter exterior, thanks to whipped egg whites and a bit of baking soda. The addition of sour cream adds moisture, flavor, and tenderness to the cake. I use it in muffins and other cake recipes for the same reason, and it’s the secret ingredient in homemade pie crust too!

Fair warning: today’s recipe uses several bowls and is somewhat time consuming, but it is 100% worth the effort (and the long bake time). Once its cooled, I love serving mine with macerated strawberries and whipped cream–but its divine by itself too!

What You Need

Today’s ingredients are super basic and fairly similar to a traditional pound cake, with a few exceptions:

• Sour cream. Of course! While I’d like to say you simply can’t make this recipe without sour cream, I do think full-fat plain Greek yogurt would work fine here too. I haven’t tried this substitution myself though, so if you do try it, please let me know how it goes for you.
• Eggs. You’ll be using six whole eggs in this recipe, and unlike my regular pound cake, you’ll be separating them to whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. This creates a soft, beautifully textured cake.
• Baking soda. Most traditional pound cake recipes don’t include a leavening agent, but today’s sour cream version needs a small amount for a nice rise.
• Flour. Do NOT use self-rising flour! All-purpose works fine here–just make sure you know how to measure your flour properly, or your cake could come out dry. I like to use a kitchen scale to measure mine.

SAM’S TIP: Make sure to thoroughly grease and flour your pan! I like to use Crisco and my hands to get in all the nooks and crannies of the bundt. After adding the flour, remember to tap out an excess, or your sour cream pound cake will come out looking floury.

Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!

How to Make It

1. Thoroughly cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer.
2. Add the egg yolks one at at time, then add the vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, use a whisk to combine your dry ingredients.
4. Alternate adding the dry ingredients and sour cream to the egg yolk mixture, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.

5. Whip your egg whites to stiff peaks in a separate clean, dry, and grease-free bowl.
6. Gently fold your whipped egg whites into your batter.
7. Pour the batter into a very well greased and floured pan and bake for 90 minutes.
8. Use a wood skewer to test your cake for doneness, then let your cake cool in its pan for 10 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

SAM’S TIP: The particularly low and long baking temperature allows this cake to cook thoroughly through without overbaking. This yields an unbelievably soft texture and a less firm, lighter exterior compared to traditional pound cake. That being said, you still can overbake this cake, so keep an eye on it!

Frequently Asked Questions

If you’ve tried my other pound cake recipes (I have a lemon pound cake and a classic bundt cake, too!), I’d love to hear how you feel this one compares!

Enjoy!

Let’s bake together!I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe andvideobelow! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me onInstagram, and you can also find me onYouTubeandFacebook

Related Recipes