Easy Vegan Pound Cake With Lemon Glaze

This super moist vegan pound cake is rich with vegan butter and dairy-free sour cream, and flavored by vanilla extract and punchy lemon zest. The finishing touch: a 2-ingredient lemon glaze that is both sweet and refreshing! 

Pound cake comes with quite a history. The traditional pound cake recipe–calling for 1 pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs–is thought to date all the way back to the 18th century! 

While I love how the historical recipe’s simplicity makes it easy to remember (yes, I struggle to recall ingredients and quantities off the top of my head too!), it of course needed a few tweaks before scoring a spot in my repertoire of vegan recipes. 

I started by swapping the traditional ingredients (butter, refined sugar, etc.) for vegan replacements. I also reduced their quantity because I don’t know about you, but making a cake recipe that calls for four pounds of ingredients is well above and beyond an amount of cake I need to have at any given time. I also decided to expand upon the standard vanilla pound cake flavor profile and inject a dose of jazzy lemon by way of juice, zest, and extract of the citrus fruit. 

And for a slightly different spin, I opted to incorporate vegan sour cream into this vegan pound cake recipe. This is not a typical ingredient in most pound cakes, however, I have always loved the rich, tangy flavor of sour cream and yogurt cakes, so I wanted to test out a marriage between these two concepts. 

Spoiler alert: they lived happily ever after! The result is an extra rich, classic vegan pound cake with a hefty texture and a bright and tangy lemon twist. 

Vegan Pound Cake Ingredients

For the Cake:

• Vegan cane sugar – You want to use granulated sugar here, but be sure to choose a brand which adheres to vegan processing methods. Most organic cane sugars are vegan as well. 
• Vegan butter – Since we’re adding salt later on, use unsalted vegan butter here. Pop over to our vegan butter taste test and review for some of my faves, or use your own favorite brand.  If you don’t have vegan butter, you can substitute it with melted coconut oil, but keep in mind that it may add a slight coconut flavor to the cake.
• Vegan sour cream – Adds richness and a background tang of flavor. Among vegan sour cream options, Wayfare Dairy Free Sour Cream and Trader Joe’s Vegan Sour Cream would be my top choices for use in this recipe. 
• Vanilla extract – Vanilla is a classic flavoring for basic pound cake recipes and I love the way its floral sweetness pairs with tart lemon. 
• Lemon extract – An intensely flavored ingredient made by extracting the oils from fresh lemon rind. You can usually find lemon extract in the baking or spice aisle of your grocery store. 
• Lemon zest – Though we are getting a ton of lemon flavor out of the addition of lemon extract, I also love the freshness that actual lemon zest brings to the cake. Nothing beats seeing flecks of actual citrus zest speckled throughout a baked good! 
• Salt – Serves to enhance the sweetness of the sugar and the tang of lemon–does not end up tasting salty though.
• All-purpose flour – Good ol’ AP flour is the perfect base for this classic vegan pound cake. 
• Baking powder – The all-important leavening agent! Pound cake is an expectedly dense, rich cake so we’re not looking for a ton of lift and fluff here. A bit of baking powder provides just the right amount. 

For the Lemon Glaze:

• Powdered sugar – As with the granulated sugar you use in the cake itself, make sure you choose a vegan powdered sugar to make the lemon glaze. 
• Lemon juice – Adds lemon flavor as well as works to dissolve the powdered sugar, creating a thick and silky glaze. Make sure to use fresh lemon juice here, not the pre-bottled stuff–it makes a big difference in the final flavor. 

How to Make Vegan Pound Cake

1. Prep and cream. Preheat your oven to 350℉ and line a loaf pan with parchment paper. In a large mixing bowl, combine cane sugar and softened (not melted!) vegan butter. Use an electric mixer or vigorously whisk by hand to cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is light and fluffy. 
2. Add wet ingredients. Add vegan sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon extract, and freshly grated lemon zest to the butter mixture. 
3. Mix. Continue beating until the wet ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is smooth. 
4. Add dry ingredients. Add salt, all-purpose flour, and baking powder to the wet ingredient mixture. 
5. Stir. At this point, use a spoon instead of the mixer or whisk and stir until the mixture just comes together. 
6. Transfer. Pour your pound cake batter into the prepared loaf pan.
7. Bake. Place your cake in the preheated oven and bake for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool in the loaf pan, then remove it and place it on a wire rack to cool completely. 
8. Make the glaze. While the cake cools, start working on the lemon glaze! Combine the powdered cane sugar and lemon juice in a bowl, then whisk until smooth. It may not seem like enough liquid at first, but have faith and just keep whisking–the sugar will dissolve eventually and the glaze will smooth out! Once the cake is completely cooled, pour the icing over the top. 
9. Slice and serve. Once the icing is firm, slice the cake and serve it up!

Watch Us Make Vegan Pound Cake

Chef Tips 

For the smoothest lemon glaze, measure your powdered sugar into a fine mesh strainer set over a large mixing bowl. Gently tap the side of the strainer until all of the sugar is sifted through and into the bowl, breaking down any lumps as needed. Of course, if you have an actual sugar sifter, go ahead and use that instead! 

When zesting a lemon: 

• Zest only the colorful, yellow layer of the lemon. You want to avoid getting any of the white part–called the pith–into your cake as it has a bitter taste. 
• Be sure to choose a fresh, firm lemon for zesting as it will have plenty of essential oils. While a slightly dry, hardened lemon may still contain plenty of good juice, the flavor is often gone from the zest. 
• Use a citrus zester, microplane, or fine cheese grater to zest the lemon rind. If you do not have any of these tools, use a vegetable peeler to remove the rind in thin strips, then use a knife to chop it finely. 
• For best flavor, hold off on zesting your lemon until you are ready to stir it into the cake batter–this stuff is delicate and dries out quickly. If you prefer to prep your zest ahead of time, just be sure to keep it covered. 

How to Store 

At Room Temperature. Once cooled and glazed, store this vegan pound cake in an airtight container at room temperature. You can keep it for up to 5 days. 

Freezing. This pound cake freezes incredibly well! To do so, make sure it is chilled first so that the icing is hardened as opposed to sticky, then wrap it in plastic wrap and place it in a freezer-safe container or bag. It will last for up to 3 months if stored properly.

Thaw. Transfer your frozen pound cake to the fridge and let it defrost there. Allowing it to thaw slowly in the fridge is not only safer, but it reduces the amount of condensation that forms–keeping your pound cake from getting soggy. 

Reheating. If you’d like to warm your pound cake, simply place it in the oven at 350℉ for 5-10 minutes, or until warmed through. If your vegan pound cake is already cut into slices, they’ll take just a couple of minutes to warm.