This vegan lemon pound cake has a soft, tender and dense crumb and it’s loaded with buttery, lemony flavor. On top goes an intensely lemony, delicious glaze.
If you love vegan cake recipes like vegan lemon yogurt bundt cake and vegan lemon cake with lemon curd topping, this is the dessert for you.
This vegan lemon pound cake is one of my all-time favorite desserts, and I’ll tell you why.
It has a dense, perfectly tender and velvety crumb — exactly as a pound cake should. Add to that the bright, lemony flavor in each bite compounded astronomically by the lemon glaze. What’s not to love?
What is a pound cake?
Pound cakes were so named because they were originally made with a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs and a pound of flour. There was no leavening and the name itself was the recipe.
But over time, as cooks and times changed, pound cakes began to incorporate more ingredients, like sour cream, milk, and even leavening like baking soda and baking powder.
A vegan pound cake would require you do away with two key ingredients: butter and eggs. But that is a problem that’s easily solved with all we know about vegan baking today. Butter is easy enough to sub–I’ve used olive oil in the past just for a different flavor, but my advise is to just go with vegan butter for the best flavor. And you don’t need a pound of it. You just need a quarter of a pound, or one stick of butter.
The eggs don’t get a single substitute. Instead, I use a bit of cornstarch in the recipe, which helps with binding and also makes the cake crumb lighter. And I add some baking soda and baking powder for a bit of lift and structure, although you don’t want too much of it, because you want that dense, soft crumb.
Why you will love this vegan pound cake
- Buttery and authentic flavor. You can’t have a pound cake without the buttery flavor and in this vegan pound cake the vegan butter and cultured vegan yogurt add lots of buttery flavor while keeping the cake dairy-free.
- Soft, silky, dense crumb. A defining characteristic of the perfect pound cake is its soft, dense crumb, and this vegan pound cake does not disappoint. The cake has a tender, melt-in-the-mouth texture anyone will fall in love with!
- Easy recipe. This is a pretty straightforward recipe and if you follow it carefully, you will succeed. I’ve tried making this in one bowl and while you can do that, I prefer the texture that results from the process of mixing the dry and wet ingredients separately before combining them.
- Soy-free, nut-free recipe. It’s also eggless and dairy-free, of course.
Ingredients
- Unbleached all purpose flour. This is the best type of flour for that dense, soft crumb we are looking for.
- Cornstarch. Cornstarch will help make the vegan pound cake more tender. Tapioca starch will also work.
- Leavening: baking powder and baking soda. These help the cake rise a bit so it’s not heavy and dense, which it would be without eggs.
- Granulated sugar and powdered sugar (for glaze). Use any granulated sugar of your choice, including vegan cane sugar. A darker sugar like turbinado sugar or coconut sugar will give the loaf cake a darker color.
- Vegan butter. Make sure it’s softened to room temperature before adding to the batter. You can also melt the butter, which would give the cake an airier crumb.
- Vegan yogurt. Vegan yogurt is important in this recipe for the buttery flavor. I used my homemade cultured cashew yogurt, but use any unsweetened store-bought yogurt.
- Fresh-squeezed lemon juice and zest. These add so much bright, citrusy flavor to the pound cake recipe and the zest adds pretty yellow flecks throughout the loaf.
- Pure vanilla extract. This adds a nice sweetness and complements the lemon.
How to make vegan lemon pound cake
Whisk the dry ingredients — flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt — in a large mixing bowl. Whisk the room temperature butter into the flour.
In another bowl beat the vegan yogurt, vanilla extract, lemon juice and lemon zest until smooth. Add to the flour mixture in two batches, making sure to mix thoroughly with a spatula each time. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl periodically to ensure no dry flour remains in the bowl.
Prepare a loaf pan by coating it with oil, butter or cooking spray and placing a piece of parchment paper at the bottom to make unmolding easier. Scrape the batter into the loaf pan. This is a thick batter, but that’s okay. Bake the loaf in a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit/180 degree Celsius oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool the pound cake on a rack for 10 minutes, unmold, then continue cooling the cake on the rack.
Place all the glaze ingredients in a bowl and whisk thoroughly until smooth. Glaze the pound cake after it has cooled. Reserve some glaze to drizzle over individual slices while serving. If the glaze hardens up, pop it in the microwave or place the bowl in warm water for a few seconds to loosen it.
Serving suggestions
This vegan pound cake is delicious by itself. But if you want to dress it up further, here are some suggestions for toppings:
- Fresh berries, including blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.
- Sliced peaches and vegan whipped cream.
- If you skip the glaze, you can top the lemon pound cake with vegan lemon curd.
- Sliced bananas, sweetened coconut flakes and a drizzle of maple syrup.
Expert tips
- Baking a pound cake is different from baking a regular cake in a few crucial ways. You need to switch up your technique a bit when you make it. When you make other cakes, you want the crumb to be airy and fluffy, so you start out by creaming the vegan butter and sugar together and incorporate air into your batter. With a pound cake, which is soft but has a dense crumb, you want to reverse the technique–you want to mix the flour and other dry ingredients and then add the liquid ingredients to it without incorporating too much air into them first.
- Traditional pound cakes do not use leavening agents, but we will use baking soda and baking powder in the vegan pound cake recipe because they will help give the cake a bit of a rise, which the egg would, and make it lighter.
- With the butter, I tried two different techniques and both produced different results, so I wanted to share those in case you’d like to try either. The way you incorporate butter into this recipe, a technique I learned from this awesome video, to get the right pound cake texture, is to add it to the flour so the butter coats it. This does produce a more dense crumb, but be sure that your butter is completely soft if you do so. Otherwise the butter might not incorporate thoroughly. When I tried making the cake again, I melted the butter and then added it. I preferred this technique because it produced a slightly lighter crumb. You can try either.
- Some of the lemon flavor dissipates from the pound cake during baking so while a fourth of a cup of lemon juice might seem like a lot, it isn’t.
- The kind of pan you use will determine the color of your cake. A metal pan will produce a darker color on the outside, and a glass pan will give your cake a lighter look.
- Don’t worry if the pound cake cracks on top–it is meant to. 🙂
Recipe FAQs
Yes. Just leave out the lemon juice and instead add ¼ cup of non-dairy milk, including oat milk, almond milk or soy milk, or any plant-based milk of your choice. Add a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to the milk to make “vegan buttermilk”. This will activate the baking soda and give your cake some lift and structure. To make a vegan vanilla pound cake, double the vanilla amount.
You can, the pound cake is delicious without it. That said, the lemon glaze does add so much pop and flavor and it makes the cake prettier.
Definitely. But you will need to double the recipe if you’re baking this in a standard bundt cake pan, which has a 12- to 16-cup capacity. This recipe doubles easily, and you’ll have more–and a prettier–pound cake to eat. Make sure you double up on the glaze as well, if using.
You can also bake the pound cake in an 8-inch cake pan.
Storage instructions
- Refrigerate: Store the cake in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.
- Freeze: Freeze the pound cake, either whole or sliced, in a freezer-safe container for up to three months. You can also wrap individual slices in freezer wrap, then place them in a freezer-safe bag and store.
- Thaw the pound cake before eating.
More delicious vegan loaf cake recipes
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Vegan Lemon Pound Cake Recipe
This vegan lemon pound cake has a soft, tender and dense crumb and it’s loaded with buttery, lemony flavor. On top goes an intensely lemony, delicious glaze.
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Servings: 8 slices
Calories: 377kcal
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Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C.
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In a large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, sugar and salt.
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Whisk the butter into the flour until incorporated, a few seconds.
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In another bowl, mix the yogurt, vanilla extract and lemon juice and zest until combined.
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Add the liquid mixture to the flour in two batches, mixing thoroughly with a spatula after each addition. Make sure you scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition. If using a stand mixer, mix for 20 seconds after each addition.
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Prepare a loaf pan by coating it with cooking spray and placing a piece of parchment paper at the bottom to make unmolding easier.
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Scrape the batter into the pan. It will be quite thick. Smooth the top wth the spatula.
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Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. The top will crack, but that’s typical of pound cakes and actually gives your cake a nice look.
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Cool the cake on a rack for 10 minutes, then unmold it and continue cooling it on the rack.
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Once the cake has nearly cooled, prepare the glaze by mixing the powdered sugar with the lemon juice and vanilla, if using. Drizzle it over the pound cake, and reserve some glaze to drizzle over individual slices.
Nutrition
Serving: 1slice | Calories: 377kcal | Carbohydrates: 59g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 14g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 4g | Monounsaturated Fat: 7g | Trans Fat: 2g | Sodium: 309mg | Potassium: 133mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 34g | Vitamin A: 1IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 30mg | Iron: 2mg
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