My big mama’s Southern Cream Cheese Pound Cake recipe is the best one you will ever taste y’all. Passed down from generation to generation, this moist, tender, buttery cake melts in your mouth and is straight up heaven in every single bite. I’m keeping her tradition of feeding folks her famous desserts alive, and I can’t wait for you to get into this recipe straight from her. This cream cheese pound cake is legit pure nostalgia and deliciousness, all wrapped up in one epic treat.
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Having my followers name me “The Queen of Pound Cakes” is one of my greatest honors. I take that honor seriously boos. That’s why I share the best in my arsenal with you, especially this cream cheese pound cake straight from my big mama Maggie Small.
The care and meticulous nature of the baking process my Big Mama taught me was more than just learning to bake; I was learning about my family’s deep-rooted traditions and the fabric of our heritage. It’s just how we get down y’all. She passed this recipe to me, and now I’m passing it right to you.
The Lowdown of This Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Cuisine Inspiration: Southern boos!
Primary Cooking Method: Baking
Dietary Info: Contains gluten, dairy, and eggs
Key Flavor: Rich, buttery, tender, melt in your mouth
Skill Level: Intermediate (put those baking skillz to use)
Irresistible Flavor
The flavor of this cream cheese cake is straight up undeniable. It is buttery while simultaneously being dense and light in a way that doesn’t seem possible y’all. The cream cheese adds moisture and richness in the most unique way.
Generations Old
The elders definitely knew how to bake pound cakes like nobody else. This old school recipe is tried and true with no edits because it simply “works”.
Versatile and No-Fuss
This cream cheese pound cake recipe can be made with simple straight-forward ingredients plus it can be served for breakfast, a snack and of course dessert.
Ingredients you’ll need to make this cream cheese pound cake recipe
- Butter: This is legit one of the most important ingredients in this cream cheese cake. Go with high fat and high quality so you get that delish creamy richness and flavor in each and every bite.
- Cream Cheese: Tangy, sweet, and smooth, cream cheese is what makes this cake so different and the texture so unreal!
- Oil: This gives our pound cake with cream cheese a bit more moisture so it stays nice and tender.
- Granulated Sugar: The sugar is gonna melt into that butter and add the perfect amount of sweetness and lift to our cake in the creaming period.
- Eggs: These are the stabilizers in our cake. The yolks add more richness and moistness too.
- Cake Flour: This is gonna give us a softer more tender crumb versus using a heartier flour like all-purpose.
- Vanilla: Nothing highlights a cream cheese cake recipe like the aromatic notes of pure vanilla y’all.
How to make cream cheese pound cake
What to serve with pound cake with cream cheese
- Classic OG Style: Serve it up classic with just that sprinkle of powdered sugar and a few fresh berries.
- Dollop it Up: Add a dollop of whipped cream for a light textural change.
- Warm with Ice Cream: A scoop of vanilla ice cream, strawberry ice cream or mocha ice cream is a great compliment.
- Sauce it Up!: Add a nice spoonful of strawberry sauce or lemon curd.
- Drizzle it On: A light drizzle of chocolate ganache or caramel sauce adds some decadence.
- Classic Southern Dinner: This cream cheese pound cake is great served up for dessert with sweet potato pie along with a simple meal of fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, Southern green beans, collard greens and fried cornbread.
Recipe Substitutions
- Butter: This recipe uses unsalted butter but if you don’t have any around, salted is fine boos. Just leave out the salt in the recipe.
- Cake Flour: This truly lightens this cake up but if you don’t have any, you can make your own cake flour with all-purpose flour and cornstarch y’all.
- Granulated Sugar: You can swap in a light brown sugar here. It will give it a deeper more intense caramel like sweetness.
- Vanilla Extract: You can also replace the extract with vanilla bean paste for more vanilla intensity.
Recipe Variations and Additions
- Lemon It Up: Turn this into a lemon pound cake by adding the zest of one juicy lemon to the batter and drizzling a lemon glaze over the top of the baked cake. Citrus goals boo!
- Berry Textures: Fold some fresh or frozen berries like blueberries or raspberries into the batter before baking. That’s so good y’all!
- Chocolate Vibes: Add some cocoa powder or melted chocolate to the batter for a chocolate twist.
- Spice it Up Boos: Toss some warm spices into the batter like some ground cinnamon or nutmeg. It makes that batter super cozy.
- Fall Twist: For all you pumpkin spice boos, mix in some pureed pumpkin or sweet potato and a pinch of pumpkin pie spice to give this cream cheese pound cake recipe the ultimate fall vibes.
Expert Tips and Tricks for making the best cream cheese cake
- Don’t skimp on the creaming! This is what makes for the most tender and moist cake ever! Don’t speed it up. Be patient and let those sugar crystals totally melt into that butter making it light and fluffy.
- Room Temp Ingredients: In order to make that batter as smooth and perfectly combined as possible, make sure you pull out the room temp butter and eggs y’all.
- Make over mix boos!: Once you add your flour to this cake, slow down that mixer and stop as soon as the flour as incorporated. If you keep on going, the gluten will overactive and create a dense cake.
- Grease it Up!: Even non-stick baking pans need a little extra love y’all. This homemade cake release is a Godsend but you can totally use a spray or go old school with shortening then flour in the pan like my big mama did.
How to store cream cheese pound cake
Once cooled, either tightly wrap in plastic wrap so no air gets in or add to a cake container. Store at room temp for up to 5 days.
How long will it last in the fridge?
I don’t recommend placing this cream cheese cake in the fridge since it will dry it out. Store at room temp so that texture stays on point.
Can I freeze ?
Wrap the cake in plastic wrap tightly then put it in a heavy-duty freezer bag. A frozen pound cake will keep for 4-6 months. When ready to serve it back up, thaw overnight in the fridge.
Frequently asked questions
Naw boos, it doesn’t. Don’t be put off by the idea of cream cheese in your cake. It gives such a smooth texture and slight tang that really makes this cake irresistible y’all.
Honestly boos, I recommend cake flour for a finer more tender crumb. It can be used but just know that the texture won’t be exactly the same.
Most old school pound cakes don’t have leavenings so you gotta rely on your creaming period. That means you cannot skimp on your butter and sugar mixing time because this is a period that incorporates more air into your cake boos.
Y’all this cream cheese pound cake is so special for me. It’s what legit started Grandbaby Cakes. My big mama’s cake became a sensation whenever I made it for folks. Now I’m passing on my secrets to you. I hope you love it.
More Southern cake recipes
- Hummingbird Cake
- Chocolate Pound Cake
- Lemon Pound Cake
- Southern Caramel Cake Recipe
- 7 UP Pound Cake
- Kentucky Butter Cake
- Sock it to me Cake
- Butter Pound Cake
- Sour Cream Pound Cake
- 35 Pound Cake Recipes
- Million Dollar Pound Cake
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
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Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter room temperature
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or shortening
- 8 ounces cream cheese room temp, one brick
- 2 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 6 large eggs room temperature
- 3 cups sifted cake flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- powdered sugar for garnish
Instructions
- Start by preheating your oven to 325°F then liberally spray a 12-cup bundt pan with non-stick baking spray or grease with butter or shortening and then flour.
- In your mixer bowl, add butter, oil or shortening, and cream cheese and beat for 2 minutes on high speed. Slowly add in sugar beat on high speed for an additional seven minutes until very pale yellow and fluffy. There is no leavening in this cake because we add ample air to this cake by having a very long creaming period.
- Next, add eggs, one at a time, combining well after each addition and scraping down the sides as needed.
- Turn your mixer down to its lowest speed, and slowly add flour into batter in two increments then add salt. Be careful not to over beat.
- Lastly, add in vanilla extract, scrape down sides and mix until just combined and turn off mixer.
- Pour cake batter into prepared bundt pan, and bake for 1 hour and 15 -20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert cake on serving plate for at least an hour or until the cake is cool to the touch.
- Dust with powdered sugar and serve.
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I’m worried that there is way too much sugar in this recipe. Can I bring it down to one cup only, or even less? Thank you.
Unfortunately that is way too little sugar and it will mess up the carefully constructed ratios. The lowest I have brought it down is to 2 1/2 cups of sugar. You can maybe mix in some sugar replacement if you would like.
It’s a luxurious decadent pound cake for goodness sake, not a loaf of everyday bread!
This is definitely a 5 star recipe!Thanks for the great recipe & clear instructions!
Dear Jocelyn
I haven’t tried the cake yet (but I’m going to soon!). I wonder if you could possibly add into your recipes relevant weight (ideally by grams) of your ingredients. I live in Europe (Austria) and my ingredients differ to US ingredients. One way that I have found to be able to re-create US baked goods is to use weight, rather than volume measurements. For instance, sugar! If you gave me the weight and told me to beat until light and fluffy, the grain of sugar wouldn’t have so much effect. But the volume of the different grain of sugar will make a huge difference to the amount, if you see what I mean.
And I’m not asking for everything to be in weight. Just the main ingredients, like butter, flour, and sugar. I have the spoons and some Pyrex cups for liquids. And of course, there’s a different scale for eggs…added to which, I live in the mountains, so have to take altitude into account to boot!
Anyway, thanks for your site. Lots of wonderful ideas and I love the family connections that you include.
All the best
Oh absolutely! If you click Metric at the bottom of the ingredients, it will showcase the weight measurements. Let me know if you have any questions.
What makes this cake rise? There’s no baking powder
This cake doesn’t actually need the leavening. I ask for a longer creaming period to add more add to the cake in that way.
We debated using butter and flour in the pan but followed the recipe for just spray oil. Horrible. The cake stuck and broke in half. We’ve never had that happen in our Bundt pan.
Hi William, my recipe does not call for oil spray. I ask for those to use a non stick baking spray which comes with flour in it. Just spraying oil would never work for this. I’m sorry for your confusion. In the future, you can also make your own non stick formula https://grandbaby-cakes.com/homemade-cake-release/
However downgrading my review for something that has nothing to do with the recipe is disappointing.
I believe using Cake Flour..it has all the ingredients already in it.
My family loved this pound cake. The ingredients and instructions are simple and straight forward. I used a hand mixer the whole time and everything turned out great! It is delicately sweet. We paired it with a berry compote and fresh whipped cream. It doesn’t feel heavy or overly rich. Just perfect. It tastes delicious on its own, too!! Make it. You won’t regret it!!
Jocelyn, I just found the video for this recipe so I now have the answer to my whisk question. I can’t wait to try this cake! Thanks for posting.
I completely missed that I was supposed to use the whisk attachment. I used the paddle but got very worried during the 7 min creaming process. It got very liquidy and thin. Never saw that happen while creaming butter, cream cheese and oil. Very weird.
But then, I just took it out of the oven and it looks just fine. We’ll wee when I serve it tomorrow night.
Oh it should be fine. Let me know how it turns out.
My SNL said this recipe brings him back to grandma cakes and somehow this cake just does it for him. Delish . I’ve made him 4 of these and he is still coming back for more
This cake looks delicious. I can’t wait to make it. I see in the picture above that you are using the whisk attachment. Do you use that attachment for the entire mixing process, or do you switch over to the paddle attachment after you have beaten the butter, oil, and sugar together? Thanks
Ms Jocelyn, I used this recipe to bake a pound cake for Sunday dessert. It took my taste buds to one of my mama pound cakes when she baked when I was a child. Thanks so very much for this wonderful recipe. When I bake this cake again, I plan on using homemade butter from the Monastery. I love a good pound cake and found one. Thanks
Everything that I have made using your recipes has been great !!!