Blood Orange Pound Cake - Buttery and Moist

Recipe: Blood Orange Pound Cake Recipe »

Discover the secret to a perfect pound cake. This classic butter cake is dense, velvet and buttery. I'll show you how the reverse creaming method gives you a tight, tender crumb. This version also has blood orange for a zesty, buttery delight!

About This Pound Cake Recipe

A pound cake is a classic butter cake. Traditionally it was made with a pound of each ingredient (butter, flour, sugar). A madeira cake is a close cousin of the pound cake. However they're both dense and buttery cakes with a velvety texture to them. Think the opposite of a sponge cake which is light and airy!

Pound cakes usually don't use any baking powder which gives them that velvety, dense, close crumbed texture. The eggs are what give it a rise but even then it's still dense and buttery. If you love nostalgic bakes and simple cakes then you'll love a pound cake but if you like light cakes, try another type of cake.

And I'm going to show you how to get a beautiful velvety texture and a tightly packed crumb without holes or gaps using an ingenious mixing method! This blood orange pound cake is an updated version of my yuzu pound cake recipe and I know, I know I make a lot of pound cakes but Your Honour it was these blood oranges that I had that deserved a cake as their destiny.

Blood oranges are a seasonal citrus fruit that has a short season. When you cut them open they have a gorgeous purple colour to them and this also makes for a beautifully coloured rosy juice and pink frosting when mixed with icing/powdered sugar. They have less acidity than regular oranges and are as beautiful as they are delicious. I have a whole blood orange recipe section because I love them so much (including my popular and copied (arrgh!) upside down blood orange cake).

Tips For Making Pound Cake Recipe

1 - My pound recipe cake is all about the reverse creaming method. Usually with cakes you beat the butter and sugar, add eggs and then the flour. But with reverse creaming you start by whisking the flour and sugar together and then add the butter in in cubes and then you add the eggs in a steady stream.

Reverse creaming works because each grain of flour is coated in butter before liquid is added inhibiting gluten development. Once you see how even and velvety the crumb is compared to other pound cake recipes and how tender the cake is, you'll love it!

2 - Make sure that the butter is soft-I'm talking soft enough to pass a butter knife through it without having to add much pressure (or 24-25°C/75.2-77°F if you're so inclined ;) ).

3 - One of my favourite secret ingredients to a pound cake is custard powder. This is more a British thing so it may be difficult to find in America (unless online) but custard powder is basically cornflour or cornstarch with vanilla added to it. Cornflour or cornstarch is a low protein flour so when you use it in cakes it produces a softer cake (less protein=less gluten and less bonds aka toughness). If you can't find it, replace it with cornflour/cornstarch and more vanilla.

4 - Usually with a lot of cakes you can turn them around in the oven halfway through to have them bake evenly but I find that if I do that with loaf cakes the inside sometimes sinks if I open the door so I always keep the oven door closed until the centre of the cake rises and crowns (peek through the window). Then it's safe to open the oven door and test that the cake is done by pressing down gently in the centre so that it springs back or by inserting a toothpick to see if it comes out clean.

5 - Depending on the dimensions of the cake tin, the pound cake can take longer or shorter to cook. Look for the centre crack to have risen and make a crown.

6 - We bake this at a lower temperature-140C/284F fan forced or 160C/320F conventional to keep it as moist as possible.

7 - Another baking tip is to keep a tray of water on the bottom of the oven. This produces steam that keeps the pound cake even more moist.

8 - For a nice blood orange or citrus flavour, make sure to use lots of finely grated zest. 2 tablespoons is a good amount. Blood oranges can be subbed for orange, lime or lemons.

9 - To make the zest strips, peel 2-3 pieces of the zest of the blood orange and then slice very thinly with a small, sharp knife or use a citrus zester tool.

Blood Orange Pound Cake Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 70 minutes

Serves: 6-8 people

Ingredients Needed

• 350g/12.3ozs caster or superfine sugar
• 250g/8.8ozs cake flour
• 1/4 cup/38g/1.3ozs vanilla custard powder*or cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 225g/0.5lb salted butter, softened to between 24-25°C/75.2-77°F, cut into small cubes
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 50ml/1.7flozs blood orange juice
• 2 tablespoons finely grated blood orange zest

For Blood Orange Frosting

• 150g/5ozs icing or powdered sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons blood orange juice
• 20 pistachios, skinned
• 12 very thin slices blood orange zest

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 140C/284F fan forced or 160/320F conventional and line a 19x10.5x11cm or 7.75x4.25x4.5inch loaf tin with parchment on the base and sides. Whisk the sugar, cake flour, custard powder and salt together with a balloon whisk in a mixer bowl. Fit the mixer with a paddle attachment and set it on low speed.

Step 2 - Drop the butter cubes into the mixer bowl one by one. The batter will look sandy then will look a bit like buttercream. Whisk the eggs, blood orange juice and zest together in a jug. Increasing the speed of the mixer to medium and add the protective collar if you have one to avoid the batter splashing. Add the egg mixture in a steady, thin stream until it comes together. Scrape down the sides and mix on medium for 5 seconds more. Scoop into the prepared tin and smooth over the top with an angled spatula. Bake for 65-70 minutes or until the centre crack rises - if you press it gently, it should spring back when done. Cool in the tin for 30 minutes. Then remove from the tin.

Step 3 - To make the frosting, sift the icing sugar into a bowl (Thermomix tip: set to 8 seconds, speed #8) and add the blood orange juice gradually so that it is not too thin but can still be spooned over the cake and drip slowly down the sides. Add pistachios and orange zest strips before the frosting sets.

Personal Note

I love how scientific baking is and how one little thing can make such a difference with the end result. I love the texture of these pound cakes and ever since I came across reverse creaming, I've been making them like this for years. I feel like it has been a mystery solved. Mr NQN and I were talking about mysteries one day over lunch.

One of the mysteries that I wanted to answers to have been solved about Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel and how she ended up in the water tank (it was accidental drowning due to psychosis induced misadventure). Then Mr NQN told me that his biggest mystery that he wanted to know what was happened to MH370 and I concurred about that one.

Then Monica said that the mystery she wanted solved was whether ghosts were real and whether you can really talk to them. Laura's mystery was where the body of Lynette Dawson from The Teacher's Pet and what did Robert Durst do to his wife while her boyfriend Adrian's mystery was what happened with JFK and where is the gold from the Amber room that was stolen by the Nazis in World War II!

And another one for me, I also want to know whether ghosts just hang around watching you have showers!

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried reverse creaming a cake? And what is the mystery that you really want solved now?

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