Vegan Pound Cake with Almond Glaze

Vegan pound cake with an almond glaze. Moist, rich and dense (but not heavy) this pound cake is super simple and absolutely delicious. 

This vegan pound cake with an almond glaze turned out super well. I’m ridiculously pleased about it.

Mostly because it took me AGES to figure it out!

Traditionally a pound cake is made with a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs and a pound of butter (the recipe usually makes more than one loaf if you were wondering why so much of each!).

Now here’s the thing, when you want to veganize a recipe, and you need to replace 1 egg, it’s really quite simple, you can just use 1 flax egg or you can use some applesauce or something, it’s not a big deal.

But when you’re replacing a whole lot of eggs (like 4 of them for one loaf of pound cake), it gets more challenging.

The thing is you can’t ever use 4 flax eggs or a whole heap of applesauce because when eggs are cooked they firm up, they become solid, they provide structure. Flax eggs and applesauce don’t do that.

No egg replacer? What?

So with this vegan pound cake, I had to do a lot of improvising and I tried all sorts of combinations, and in the end did not replace the eggs at all, not at all.

I used vegan butter, sugar, flour and vegan buttermilk as the main ingredients. The result might be a tiny bit lighter and fluffier than a traditional pound cake, with a slightly looser crumb, but it’s still much denser than a sponge cake and works very well for this.

Another little snafu I was running into was a case of sinking in the middle! And then thankfully I found a great troubleshooting article which goes through all the reasons this can happen, most of which I was aware of but one important one that I didn’t know.

So since my baking powder was fresh, I was not opening the oven when my cake was rising, and I was not overbeating my batter, my oven temperature was correct, and I was not leaving my batter to sit for too long before baking, I realized that what I WAS doing wrong was using too much baking powder.

The ratio is 1 to 1 and ½ tsp baking powder per cup of flour, not more than that when you’re making cakes.

Since my recipe uses 2 cups of flour, the maximum amount of baking powder I can then use is 3 tsp. And when it was sinking in the middle I was using 4!

It was sinking in the middle because the cake was rising too fast without enough structure to support it, hence the collapse in the middle. So as soon as I dropped the baking powder down to 3 tsp that problem was solved.

How to prevent your vegan pound cake from over-browning

The other little issue I had was too much browning on top. This cake bakes for an hour. So does my vegan banana bread, but with banana bread, if it gets browned and crispy and caramelized on top it’s just perfect, whereas with this, you don’t want it too brown on top.

The solution? Tent it with foil for the last 20 minutes of baking. And if you’re wondering what ‘tenting’ is, it’s exactly like it sounds.

Take foil and place it in a tent like shape over the top of your loaf pan. It allows it to continue to bake without over-browning on top, while also protecting your cake so that the foil doesn’t push down on it from the top (the reason for the ‘tent’, rather than just putting foil over the top).

Since it’s only for the last 20 minutes, the cake has done all its rising by then so opening the oven at this point to put a foil tent over the top doesn’t interfere with your cake rising and doesn’t cause any sinking side effect.

The almond glaze

The almond glaze on top was because as delicious as this vegan pound cake is, well sometimes pound cake can be considered a little…. boring.

It’s really quite plain, like you’d probably want to serve it with something else, like a fruit compote and vegan whipped cream or ice cream or something to jazz it up a bit.

But with the almond glaze and lots of almond flakes on top, this jazzes it up very nicely and it looks and tastes absolutely delicious.

So I really hope you will love this vegan pound cake with almond glaze. It is:

• Moist
• Rich
• Dense (but not heavy)
• Super simple
• Topped with an almond glaze

Keep it covered at room temperature where it will stay good for a few days or covered in the fridge where it will stay good for up to a week.

More delicious vegan cakes!

1. Vegan Lemon Cake
2. Vegan Chocolate Cake
3. Vegan Vanilla Cake
4. Vegan Banana Cake
5. Vegan Coconut Cake
6. Vegan Carrot Cake

Let us know in the comments what you think of this vegan pound cake and please do rate the recipe too, thank you! 

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Vegan Pound Cake

Vegan pound cake with an almond glaze. Moist, rich and dense (but not heavy) this pound cake is super simple and absolutely delicious.

4.89 from 17 votes

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Course: Baking, Cakes, Dessert

Cuisine: Vegan

Diet: Vegan

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings: 10

Calories: 276kcal

Author: Alison Andrews

Ingredients

For the Vegan Pound Cake:

• ▢ ½ cup Vegan Butter (112g)
• ▢ 1 cup White Granulated Sugar (200g)
• ▢ 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• ▢ 2 cups All Purpose Flour (250g)
• ▢ 3 tsp Baking Powder
• ▢ ½ tsp Salt
• ▢ 1 cup Vegan Buttermilk (240ml) 1 Tbsp lemon juice + soy milk up to the 1 cup line

For the Almond Glaze Topping:

• ▢ 1 cup Powdered Sugar (120g)
• ▢ 1 and ½ Tbsp Soy Milk or other non-dairy milk
• ▢ Few Drops Almond Extract

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Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C)
• Add the vegan butter and sugar to the bowl of an electric mixer and cream them together. Add the vanilla extract and mix in.
• Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the baking powder and salt and mix together and then add into the bowl with the vegan butter and sugar.
• Make your vegan buttermilk by adding 1 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice to a measuring jug and then pouring in soy milk up to the 1 cup (240ml) line and then stirring in so it curdles. You can also use almond milk if you prefer. Add to the other ingredients.
• Mix into a batter with a spoon. The batter will be thick. Mix in properly but be careful not to overmix.
• Spray a 9x5 loaf pan with non-stick spray and then line it with parchment paper. The best way to do this is to let the parchment paper hang over the sides so that when your cake is done you can just lift it out.
• Transfer your cake batter to the loaf pan and smooth it down.
• Place into the oven to bake for 60 minutes.
• At the 40 minute mark, bring out the cake and add foil to the top in a tent shape. So let the top be quite high (in a tent shape) so that it doesn't press down on the cake from the top. Put the cake back in for the last 20 minutes.
• It's ready when a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
• Lift the cake out with the parchment paper and place onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
• Prepare the almond glaze by adding the powdered sugar, soy milk and almond extract to a bowl and mixing in until smooth. I didn't use the electric mixer for this, I found it was easy to mix up in a bowl.
• Spoon this out over the top of the cooled pound cake and smooth it down. It will likely run down the sides, this is fine.
• Top the cake with some almond flakes or slivers and place into the fridge for a little while so that the frosting can set.
• Cut into slices and enjoy!

Notes

1. Almond extract is quite strong tasting so I usually just put a tiny bit on the edge of a spoon and then let a few drops fall into the bowl.

Nutrition

Serving: 1Slice | Calories: 276kcal | Carbohydrates: 52.6g | Protein: 3.4g | Fat: 6g | Saturated Fat: 1.1g | Sodium: 364mg | Fiber: 0.7g | Sugar: 31.9g

DID YOU MAKE THIS RECIPE? Rate it & leave your feedback in the comments section below, or tag @lovingitvegan on Instagram and hashtag #lovingitvegan