Old-fashioned cream cheese pound cake has been a Southern favorite for decades. This pound cake is so easy to make and turns out moist and perfect every single time.
Thousands of readers have made and loved this cake and if you follow our tips and easy instructions, you’ll have a perfect pound cake that your family will love.
Pound cake is my favorite cake. I’ve made hundreds! This recipe is without a doubt The Holy Grail of pound cake recipes. It’s incredible. I did the things I’ve never done before… cold oven? Okay. Water in the oven? Um… okay. Whatever that sorcery is, it works. Thank you. I made it yesterday for my 67th birthday. I’m SO glad I did! ❤️
sandy
If you’re from the South, you know that pound cakes are as much a part of our heritage as sweet tea and front porch swings. They’re a staple at family gatherings, church picnics, holiday dinners, and other special occasions.
I started making this cream cheese pound cake more than 30 years ago, and I imagine by now I’ve made several hundred of these cakes.
Through multiple testing rounds and lots of trial and error, I’ve nailed down the best process to ensure your cake is perfect every single time.
Why this Southern cream cheese pound cake is amazing
TASTE: Have you ever eaten a pound cake so dry it made your mouth pucker? This is NOT that cake! The cream cheese and our baking technique means this cake is moist every time. The cream cheese gives it just a bit of tang and vanilla adds a subtle touch of flavor.
EASY: Once you master this recipe, you’ll have an easy cake recipe that you can make in just a couple of hours. It takes about 30 minutes to prepare the cake, and the rest is hands-off baking time.
I have even over-cooked this cake a few times and it still turns out moist and delicious — so much so that I have a hard time convincing myself to try any different pound cake recipes.
Here’s our favorite tip for eating this cake: pop your slice of cake in the microwave for about 12 seconds, and it will seem like the cake just came out of the oven. Trust us on this!
I hope you make this recipe. I think you’ll love it!
Table of Contents
If you love cream cheese desserts, be sure to also try our Cream Cheese Banana Pudding, or set out a tray of fruit and serve with this yummy Cream Cheese Fruit Dip.
Pin this now to save it for laterIngredient notes
A cream cheese pound cake uses pantry ingredients, along with cream cheese, of course. There are lots of tips below the recipe card, and we have just a few notes for you regarding ingredients.
➡️➡️➡️ The full ingredient amounts and instructions are listed below on the printable recipe card. Scroll below the recipe card for frequently asked questions and tips for success.
Unsalted butter – as with most pound cakes, the butter is the star of the show. We prefer Land o’ Lakes brand. You can use fancier, more expensive butter, but it’s unnecessary.
Just don’t use store-brand butter because there is usually a higher water content, and your cake may not turn out well.
Cream cheese – this is where the magic happens. The cream cheese combines with the butter to make the creamiest, moistest pound cake you’ve ever eaten. We’ve tested this cake with store brands of cream cheese, but we always come back to Philadelphia cream cheese.
The texture and flavor of Philadelphia cream cheese are always perfect, which is not the case with store brands. And please, do not ever use low-fat cream cheese when baking!
Sugar – we only use Domino granulated sugar. Store-brand sugar may be more finely ground, giving you more sugar per cup, which could cause your cake to fall.
Flour – if you’ve followed this site for any time, you know we primarily use White Lily flour. For this cream cheese pound cake, if you don’t have White Lily, you can use cake flour, which has a similar protein content.
Tube pan or bundt pan – it’s essential to use a pan that’s made to hold at least 10-12 cups of batter. The original cookbook recipe called for a tube pan, so that’s what we use most of the time. But if you want to make the cake prettier, then by all means, use a large Bundt pan like this one.
How to make cream cheese pound cake
Note: this is a cold oven pound cake. Do not preheat the oven! And our special tip is to place an oven-proof bowl or measuring cup of water in the oven. This helps to ensure a moist cake every single time!
Prepare the pan but NOT the oven.
Grease and flour your cake pan and set aside. Do not preheat the oven. Place an oven-safe container in the oven filled with about two cups of water.
Prepare dry ingredients.
Sift the flour and salt together on a piece of parchment paper or into a bowl.
Cream butter and cream cheese with sugar.
Add butter to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on medium-high until creamy, using the paddle attachment. Then add the cream cheese and beat for about 5 minutes on medium-high speed. Gradually add sugar and mix for another 5-7 minutes until creamy.
At this point, your batter should be pale yellow and fluffy. Because there is no chemical leavening in this cake (other than salt), physical leavening occurs when air mixes in with the sugar and butter. The air in the batter is going to help the cake rise properly.
Add eggs to butter mixture.
On medium-low speed, beat in eggs one at a time, mixing just until the yolk disappears and scraping the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add flour to butter mixture.
Gradually add the flour mixture on low speed, ensuring the batter is well-blended. Next, add the vanilla extract and mix just until blended.
Be careful here—with the butter, cream cheese, and sugar, you want to mix until the cake batter is light and aerated. But with the flour, too much mixing will cause the gluten to over-develop and change the texture of the pound cake.
Pour batter into the pan and place it in a cold oven with a water-filled oven-proof cup or bowl.
Start the cake in a cold oven.
Place the cake in the oven and turn the oven to 300 degrees F. The cake should take around one hour and fifteen minutes to bake, but I have had it take as long as one hour and forty minutes.
I suggest you start checking with a cake tester at about one hour and fifteen minutes.
You’ll know the cake is done when the tester shows just a moist crumb. Note: you can use a toothpick, but I prefer the cake tester because it’s skinny and longer.
How to serve your old-fashioned cream cheese pound cake
The best pound cake doesn’t need much in the way of a garnish. Some people sprinkle on powdered sugar, but we don’t because the cake is already quite sweet.
We do occasionally like to serve the cake drizzled with this homemade strawberry syrup or with some fresh berries and our raspberry sauce, but more often than not, we serve it plain with no complaints.
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Southern Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 8 oz. cream cheese (use Philadelphia), softened 1 block
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter, softened 3 sticks
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 6 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose flour (White Lily)
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Do not preheat the oven. Butter and flour a large (10-12-cup) Bundt or tube pan. You can set the pan on a foil-covered baking sheet in case of any over-flow. (If your pan is the correct size, overflow should not be an issue.)
- Sift together the flour and salt on a piece of parchment paper and set aside.
- Beat butter and cream cheese at medium-high speed of electric mixer until blended and creamy, about 8 minutes. Gradually add sugar, beating another 5-7 minutes on medium. The batter should get very fluffy and pale yellow, with no discernible lumps of cream cheese.
- Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low just until yellow disappears. Scrape the sides of the bowl after 3 eggs.
- With mixer on low, slowly pour in the flour from the parchment paper. Beat on low speed just until blended. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl to blend every bit. Add vanilla and stir or mix just until blended.
- Pour batter into the prepared pan and place in cold oven along with a 2 cup oven-proof measuring cup or bowl filled with water.
- Bake at 300 degrees F for about 1 hour and 15-30 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in center comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Start checking at about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
- Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes then flip onto wire rack.
Video
Notes
Ingredient
- Use room temperature ingredients. I set out the butter and eggs about an hour before making the cake.
- Use high quality ingredients – I only use Domino’s Granulated Sugar.
- Use White Lily all-purpose flour or a comparable low-protein all-purpose flour or cake flour.
- Use good quality, stick butter. Do not use margarine. I only use Land O’ Lakes unsalted butter.
- Aerate the flour before measuring—take the measuring cup and stir it around in the canister, just to mix and loosen the flour prior to measuring.
- Crack the eggs and place in a bowl before adding to the sugar mixture. This ensures you don’t accidentally get a piece of shell in the batter, and also makes it easier to pour in the eggs.
Mixing the Pound Cake Batter
- Pound cakes are unique in that they do not use leavening agents, other than a small amount of salt. So to make the cake rise properly, the mixing technique is important.
- Be sure that you beat the butter and cream cheese until it’s creamy and then add the sugar GRADUALLY and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. This will take several minutes, but these steps are vital to the success of the cake because this is what whips air into the cake batter and makes it rise during baking.
- Don’t over-beat after adding the eggs. Just beat until the yellow is blended in after each egg.
Prepping the Pan and After Baking
- Grease the pan well and dust with flour. The flour helps the cake batter adhere to the sides of the pan.
- The cake should cool about 10 minutes in the pan and then be flipped onto a rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
Tips and questions
** Cold oven: Do not preheat the oven. This cake starts in a cold oven and bakes at a low temperature. Most other cream cheese pound cake recipes require you to preheat and bake at 325 degrees F. And most other cream cheese pound cake recipes are not this good. So there’s that.
** Water in the oven: I’m not sure how this started or even if it was in the original cookbook where I found this recipe. But I’ve been adding a 2-cup measuring cup full of water to the oven for decades, and my cake is perfect every time.
I place the measuring cup behind the cake right on the oven rack, making sure it’s balanced.
** Preparing the pan: Nothing is more aggravating than baking a cake only to have it stick to the pan. Our preparation method has never failed us.
Spray the pan with nonstick baking spray or rub generously with butter. Then sprinkle generously with flour, hold the pan upside down, and tap lightly so the loose flour falls out.
In 30+ years of baking this cake, I have only had it stick once, and that was in someone else’s kitchen, where we didn’t use this method. That cake became a pound cake trifle!
** Room temperature ingredients: Your butter, cream cheese, and eggs should be at room temperature before mixing. This is true for most cakes.
** Measuring flour: Professional bakers will tell you to weigh the flour and other ingredients, and there are certainly recipes for which you need to do this. For example, we always weigh everything if we’re making sourdough bread.
For this recipe, however, you can either scoop and measure your flour or use Ina Garten’s method. She takes the measuring cup, stirs and loosens the flour, and then scoops out what is needed. This is how we do it, and it works just fine.
** Eggs: Use large eggs only and crack them into a separate bowl. This way, you don’t take a chance of getting eggshells in the batter, and the eggs are ready to go once it’s time to add them.
** Mixing the batter: We can’t emphasize enough that you must mix the butter, cream cheese, and sugar for several minutes but not too fast.
There is no leavening in this cake other than a pinch of salt, so the mixing will incorporate air, which will help the cake rise. But don’t overmix once you add the eggs and flour!
** Baking: The baking time for this cake is never going to be exact, as ovens vary, but typically it takes about 1.5 hours. I have made it in as little as an hour and ten minutes or as long as an hour and forty minutes.
Once you’ve made it and know your oven, you’ll know exactly how long to bake.
We suggest you begin checking with the cake tester at around one hour and fifteen minutes. We pull our cake when the tester shows a moist crumb — not wet batter but not fully clean.
If the tester is fully clean on a pound cake, the cake will be dry.
** Resting: After baking, allow the cake to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then flip it onto a parchment paper-covered rack to cool completely.
You can keep the cake at room temperature for up to 5 days. We don’t suggest refrigerating the cake because it will get dry, but if you need to keep it longer than a few days, refrigeration is the way to go.
Because this is a moist cake, it will start to mold after a few days. This is never an issue in our house because it doesn’t last that long!
Absolutely! Just make sure it’s cooled completely before wrapping it securely with plastic wrap and then aluminum foil.
We don’t like to freeze cake for a long time as it tends to dry out, so we recommend freezing for no more than 3-4 months.
1. The most likely reason for a pound cake to fall is exposure to cold air — maybe you opened the oven door or removed the cake from the oven before it was fully baked.
2. Another reason for a pound cake to fall is using store-brand ingredients, like sugar and butter. Store-brand sugars are typically more finely ground than name-brand sugars, which means, volume-wise, there is more sugar per cup, and that can cause a pound cake to fall.
Store-brand butter may contain more liquid fat, which can also cause problems with your cake.
3. If you don’t measure your ingredients carefully, this can also result in the pound cake falling. Extra sugar or leavening (of which there is none in this recipe!) can cause a cake to fall.
The most common causes for gummy pound cake are creaming the butter and sugar too fast or too long; overmixing the batter, which results in excess gluten development; and/or not getting all the dry flour mixed in.
Update Notes: This post was originally published October 13, 2010, and on March 13, 2025, was updated with one or more of the following: step-by-step photos, video, updated recipe, new tips.
It calls for large eggs I only have medium so how many medium eggs would I use
Hi Sabrena,
I have not tested this cake with medium eggs. The recipe calls for large eggs and that’s what I always buy. Thanks so much!
Why the cold oven ?
The edges of the cake won’t set as quickly so it will rise better.
This was an absolute HIT!!! Thank you Thank you for sharing! I made it for the first time a few days ago and after my household had their fare share I took some to my aunt and parents and their already asking me to make another one lol.
So, I have a question…. This recipe makes a pretty large amount of cake… so you think I could half the recipe and make smaller versions of it you know like in those rectangular pans you sometimes see Angel food cake and pound cake in?
I’m not sure about halving the recipe but you can make the cake in loaf pans. You’ll need to adjust the baking time and just check it earlier.
I made this cake and you talking about delicious and moist. It didn’t last but 3 days in this household. Thank you
If your oven uses the upper burner during preheat, the top of the cake will be burnt by about min 7
The oven should not be preheated for this cake.
I JUST RAN ACROSS YOUR RECIPE AND I WILL TRY IT AND LET YOU KNOW MY RESULTS THANKS M.GILMORE
Absolutely love this cake. I had never started my pound cakes in a cold oven but I did as instructed and it turned out great. Thanks for sharing your recipe..
So glad you enjoyed it!