Dairy Free Pound Cake
This dairy free pound cake is sure to fool you. It’s dense, sweet and just as “buttery” as the real thing. Top it with fresh berries and coconut whipped cream for a perfect summer dessert.
Pound cake is one of those dessert staples that you automatically associate with butter. I mean the name implies how much butter goes into the cake. So it’s kind of hard not to, but luckily, butter is easily swapped with dairy free margarine, vegan butter or vegetable shortening.
My normal go-to is butter flavored vegetable shortening. I mostly choose it because it’s shelf stable, which means it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. I normally stock up on it when my usual grocery store has a deal going (they literally put the coupons on the display for you, so you don’t have to do any work at all).
The recipe I adapted this one from makes one large tube pan cake, but I just wanted to make one simple loaf cake. I cut the recipe in half, which normally doesn’t work, but it did this time. If you want to go back to the larger version, feel free to double it and bake two loaf pans. You could even freeze one loaf and save it for another occasion. But, I only wanted to make one, and only because I needed a sweet cake base for my summer berries.
We skipped out on the whipped cream with our dairy free pound cake this time, and opted for some simple powdered sugar (not pictured), but you can go whichever way you want. Or, you can eat the cake the way it is with no toppings or whipped creams. You don’t really need it.
Get ready to soak up the sun with some fresh new recipes that are perfect for summer!
More dairy free cake recipes:
Print Dairy Free Pound Cake
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hours
- Total Time: 1 hours 15 minutes
- Yield: 1 loaf 1x
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
- 1 cup butter-flavored vegetable shortening
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 large eggs
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350˚F and grease 1 loaf pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream shortening and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
- Add lemon juice and vanilla extract. Beat until incorporated.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each egg is incorporated before adding the next.
- Add flour mixture, about 1/2 cup at a time, scraping sides as needed. Beat at medium speed until each addition is incorporated.
- Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool to room temperature before removing cake from pan.
Nutrition
- Calories: 0
- Sugar: 0 g
- Sodium: 0 mg
- Fat: 0 g
- Saturated Fat: 0 g
- Unsaturated Fat: 0 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 0 g
- Fiber: 0 g
- Protein: 0 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
Recipe adapted from Call Me PMC.
Last Updated on November 4, 2021 by Melissa Belanger
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Love that you made it dairy free! It looks delicious!
This is a great looking pound cake, I am not much of a butter lover, so this is right up my alley, easy to make and perfect with afternoon tea, or even iced-tea during these hot summer months.
Yum! Looks delicious. Thanks so much for sharing.
Really liked the pound cake, but when I put it in individual mini loaf pans, the middle fell in. How can I prevent this from happening and have form a perfect loaf? I also added three other flavors to the mix to make it a five flavor pound cake. Could this be the reason? Each flavor (vanilla extract, coconut extract, rum, almond, and lemon all were one teaspoon per. Please let me know what’s wrong.
Honestly, I can’t tell you what went wrong if you’ve changed the recipe. Baking is an exact science and if even one thing is off, the whole recipe can be ruined. I would recommend only adding 1/4 teaspoon of each if you want to have multiple flavors so you won’t increase the amount of liquid in the cake. It could also be that your baking powder wasn’t active, or that you opened the oven door while the cake was baking. There are so many reasons that could mess it up. I’m sorry you cakes didn’t turn out.
Fail.
The middle was total goo, the outside, burned.
Is there supposed to be 10 eggs in the original recipe? Yours calls for 5 in the half batch and that is the only thing I can think of that would cause the uneven baking.
So sad.
In the oven for my dear friend. Hope it comes out good. Will keep you posted.
Vara
I was really hoping it worked for me. The outside did burn with the middle not done. In addition it was way to sweet for me.
Next time I’ll lower the temperature to 300 for 90 minutes and one cup of sugar.
I can’t bake ANYTHING and I was successful with this pound cake. I wanted to make my dairy-free toddler some strawberry shortcake and this was a hit. (I divided batter into two pans evenly)
Thanks for the recipe!!
★★★★★
After I made the batter, It definitely looked like it was too much for one loaf pan so I also split it up into two and both oven temperature and timing worked out fine. The cake itself was delicious and moist. It is sweet – so I guess you can cut the sugar a little but we love sweet stuff so much that I added this simple glaze recipe as well: https://www.marthastewart.com/313152/lemon-glaze
Paired well with fresh raspberries or berry compote. One loaf was devoured immediately by my family of four. Also here’s the nutritional info for a 1-inch slice (9 slices per loaf) if you split the recipe into two loaves and I used Earth balance buttery spread
Calories = 246; Total Fat = 11g (Saturated fat 3.1; no Trans Fat); Sodium 146mg; Total Carbs = 33g (Dietary Fiber .5; Total Sugars 22g); Protein 3.1g
★★★★
Update. Made this again, but this time it didn’t make enough for two loads. I did have a little leftover for a mini loaf. Weird. Followed the recipe exactly again. Maybe the size of the eggs?
Third time making, following recipe. Similar to second attempt one full loaf, I mini loaf but this time the loaves collapsed in the middle. 3 attempt, 3 different results. 🤔Still yummy. 😋😋
I followed the recipe precisely, fighting back my habit of tweaking. I did have to bake it longer, as the center was nowhere near done after an hour. Probably about 20 minutes extra (my watch timer paused by mistake so not exactly sure). I lowered the temp to 325 after the first additional 20 minutes. It is perfect in every way! Delicious and looks beautiful. I used Earth Balance sticks for the shortening, and brought those and the eggs to room temperature. Also used a hand mixer. For those experiencing volume variations, my guess is it’s due to less or more beating of the batter.
★★★★★
Making this recipe to use with strawberries for shortcake. My granddaughter has many allergies and this recipe, she will be able to eat and not have to have something different then everyone else!
★★★★★
Did not turn out. Had the same problem as others – followed the recipe exactly and after 1hr of baking, the top and sides were browned and the middle was complete goo. Pretty disappointing.
★★