The best vegan pound cake is moist, rich, buttery and dense (but not heavy) and topped with a delicious almond glaze. It’s also easy to make.
This vegan pound cake with an almond glaze is simply perfect. It’s rich, moist and dense like a pound cake should be.
Traditionally a pound cake is made with a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs and a pound of butter (and usually makes more than one loaf).
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.
I used vegan butter, sugar, flour and vegan buttermilk as the main ingredients and the result was total pound cake perfection.
We’ve now also made a vegan lemon pound cake that is equally delicious, so check that out too.
How To Make Vegan Pound Cake
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- Add vegan butter and white granulated sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer and cream them together. Add vanilla extract and mix in.
- Prepare your vegan buttermilk by adding 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice to a measuring jug and then adding in soy milk up to the 1 cup (240ml) line. Let it curdle into buttermilk.
- Add the vegan buttermilk to the mixer and mix in with the vegan butter and sugar. It will look curdled but this is fine.
- Sift all purpose flour into a separate mixing bowl, add baking powder and salt and mix together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix into a batter with a spoon. Be careful not to overmix.
- Transfer the batter to a 9×5 loaf pan (sprayed with non-stick spray and lined with parchment paper so that there is overhang on either side) and smooth down.
- Bake at 350°F for 60 minutes. At the 40 minute mark, bring out the cake and tent it with foil and then return it to the oven for the final 20 minutes.
- It’s ready when a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Lift the cake out of the loaf pan using the parchment paper overhang and place it onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Prepare the almond glaze by adding powdered sugar, soy milk and almond extract to a bowl and mixing in until smooth.
- Spoon this on top of your cooled pound cake and smooth it down. It will likely run down the sides a little, this is fine.
- Top with almond flakes or slivered almonds and then place it into the fridge for 10 minutes for the topping to set.
- Cut into slices and serve.
Tent With Foil
Tenting your pound cake with foil for the last 20 minutes of baking, stops it from over-browning on top. 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.
Almond Glaze
As delicious as this vegan pound cake is, well sometimes pound cake can be considered a little…. boring. The almond glaze on top takes care of that!
It jazzes it up very nicely and it looks and tastes absolutely delicious.
Storing Instructions
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.
It’s also freezer friendly for up to 3 months.
More Delicious Vegan Cakes
- Vegan Lemon Cake
- Vegan Chocolate Cake
- Vegan Vanilla Cake
- Vegan Banana Cake
- Vegan Coconut Cake
- Vegan Carrot Cake
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Pound Cake
Ingredients
For the Vegan Pound Cake:
- ½ cup Vegan Butter (112g)
- 1 cup White Granulated Sugar (200g)
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 1 cup Vegan Buttermilk (240ml) 1 Tbsp lemon juice + soy milk up to the 1 cup line
- 2 cups All Purpose Flour (250g)
- 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
- ½ teaspoon Salt
For the Almond Glaze Topping:
- 1 cup Powdered Sugar (120g)
- 1 ½ Tablespoons Soy Milk or other non-dairy milk
- Few Drops Almond Extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Spray a 9×5 loaf pan with non-stick spray and line it with parchment paper so that there is overhang on either side.
- Add vegan butter and white granulated sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer and cream them together. Add vanilla extract and mix in.
- Prepare your vegan buttermilk by adding 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice to a measuring jug and then adding in soy milk up to the 1 cup (240ml) line. Let it curdle into buttermilk.
- Add the vegan buttermilk to the mixer and mix in with the vegan butter and sugar. It will look curdled but this is fine.
- Sift all purpose flour into a separate mixing bowl, add baking powder and salt and mix together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix into a batter with a spoon. Be careful not to overmix.
- Transfer the batter to your prepared 9×5 loaf pan and smooth down.
- Bake for 60 minutes. At the 40 minute mark, bring out the cake and tent it with foil* and then return it to the oven for the final 20 minutes. It's ready when a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Lift the cake out of the loaf pan using the parchment paper overhang and place it onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Prepare the almond glaze by adding powdered sugar, soy milk and almond extract to a bowl and mixing in until smooth. I didn't use the stand mixer for this, I found it was easy to mix up in a bowl.
- Spoon this on top of your cooled pound cake and smooth it down. It will likely run down the sides a little, this is fine.
- Top with almond flakes or slivered almonds and then place it into the fridge for 10 minutes for the topping to set.
- Cut into slices and enjoy!
Notes
- Vegan buttermilk – is best made with soy milk as it curdles really well. Almond milk also works.
- Tenting with foil. 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.
- Storing: Keep your pound cake stored at room temperature (covered) for a few days or in the fridge (covered) for up to a week. It’s also freezer friendly up to 3 months.
I make a ton of recipes by lovingitvegan and I’ve loved all of them. As for this pound cake I don’t feel it was buttery or dense enough like a pound cake should be. Still taste good but not what I expected. Thank you for always posting awesome recipes!
I left the glaze off. Using it in trifle. I doubled the recipe. It is amazing!
Awesome! Thanks Nicole!
Delicious! I used lemon extract instead of almond in the glaze and it was great.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing Lisa!
Wonderful recipe! Is it able to be doubled?
Thanks Paris! I haven’t tried doubling it but I think it would be fine.
Hi, this looks great! Is the vegan butter the foil wrapped block kind or can you use vegan soft margarine? Thanks!
You can use either/or in this recipe. 🙂
Hi! Wondering if you have tried this recipe with gf flour? I have some bobs red mill 1 to 1 gf baking flour
Hi Sofia, I haven’t tried it, but I do think that should work.
Will almond milk work instead of soy milk
Yes you can make the buttermilk with almond milk instead of soy.
Needed a few more minutes in the oven and didn’t turn out as dark as yours but still SO good! (I have a thermometer in the oven to double check temp, if that’s helpful)
Turned out absolutely 100% perfect, as always with this site! So lovely. I didn’t make the icing as I usually find the cakes here sufficiently sweet and yummy without icing, and I really liked the subtle classic vanilla flavor and feel of this cake.
So happy to hear that Yesim! Thanks so much for sharing!
I have tried so many vegan poundcake recipes and always end up trashing them… they are always either too sweet, too bland, too heavy or too “floury”.
This is the first recipe I have tried that comes out absolutely PERFECT!!!
I like to use this recipe with the glaze from her lemon poundcake recipe. Try it now, you will be delighted! Easy and delicious!!!
Thanks so much Lorene!
This was really good. A few changes though. I used one tablespoon of white vinegar for the buttermilk because I didn’t have any lemons. Also I added 2tbsp of orange juice and zest to the batter to make it an almond orange pound cake. It was really good!
Awesome! Thanks for sharing Elisabeth!
I don’t like soy or almond milk, can I use oat milk?
It might not curdle into buttermilk but you can still use it if you prefer.
Texture-wise, this reminded us of banana bread (but with no banana flavor) and it tasted great even plain – so we actually ate nearly half the loaf while it was still too hot to glaze!
I am very excited to try it in a bundt cake pan with pecans and butter, nut, and vanilla extract – vegan butternut cake!
Substitution notes – I used earth balance for butter and oat milk. I didn’t see curdling in the “buttermilk”, but the cake came out great. I definitely wouldn’t omit the lemon juice, when I mixed the wet and dry you could see some foaming like you do with baking powder + vinegar “eggs”.
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing Angela. 🙂
Do you have a gluten free version of this?
Hi Anneka, I don’t. You could try a gluten free all purpose flour blend instead of the regular flour and see how that goes. 🙂
Do you think this would work in a 9×13 pan with altered baking time?
Hi Melinda, it should work okay! I’m not entirely sure what the baking time might be, I’d probably check it at 30 minutes and see how it’s going then. All the best!