Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake
This Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake is incredibly moist and the flavor is amazing! If you are looking for a go-to pound cake, save this recipe.
With its brown sugar and toffee flavor and a thick glaze of caramel icing, this buttery pound cake is guaranteed to please!
Table of Contents
What Makes this Pound Cake SO good?
We have a Cake Recipes section filled with pound cakes that we absolutely love, but there are two ingredients in today's recipe that make this cake extra special: brown sugar and heavy cream.
Adding Heavy Cream to Cakes
Thanks to its higher fat content, heavy cream (or whipping cream) adds richness to cake recipes and also makes for a more tender crumb.
Our Whipping Cream Pound Cake, Marble Pound Cake, and Chocolate Whipping Cream Pound Cake are just a few examples of pound cakes with heavy cream or whipping cream (which can be used interchangeably in our recipes).
Brown Sugar in Cake Recipes
The other key ingredient in today's recipe, light brown sugar, not only adds a light caramel flavor to the cake but also moisture.
Sugar is so important in cake recipes because it attracts and locks in moisture. This is especially true for brown sugar which retains the moisture even longer, resulting in a wonderfully tender cake. You truly can taste the difference!
How to Make Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake
You can find the full, printable cake recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan.
- Flour Mixture: In a medium bowl whisk the cake flour, baking powder and salt to combine, set aside for later
- Butter Add the softened butter to the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth.
- Mixing Butter & Sugar: Gradually add the white and brown sugar and mix 3 to 5 minutes until lightened and fluffy.
- Eggs: Add the eggs one at a time mixing until the yellow of the yolk is blended.
- Vanilla: Add the vanilla extract to whipping cream and set aside.
- Add Dry and Wet Ingredients Alternately: Add the flour mixture alternately with the whipping cream to the mixture of eggs, sugar, and butter. Begin and end with the dry ingredients.
- Toffee Bits: Save ⅓ cup of toffee bits for the top of cake. Fold the rest of the 8 oz bag into the cake batter.
- Time to Bake: Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Bake times can vary! Check your cake at about 50 minutes and adjust time accordingly. Bake until a toothpick or wooden skewer comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- Cooling: Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
For the Caramel Icing
We used a simple, delicious caramel icing to glaze our pound cake.
While the glaze is optional, it is highly recommended as it complements the brown sugar and toffee flavor perfectly!
You can find the printable recipe below, but there are the basic steps to our caramel glaze!:
- Combine butter, heavy cream, salt, light corn syrup, and brown sugar in small saucepan. The corn syrup prevents graininess.
- Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat (stirring constantly).
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and cool for 10-15 minutes. (We chilled ours in the refrigerator).
- Gradually stir in the sifted confectioners sugar bit by bit until well blended. The caramel mixture with thicken as it cools. (Its important to sift the sugar so that you won't have little clumps of confectioners sugar in the caramel)
- Allow the caramel icing to cool to desired consistency and then spoon over the cake. The glaze is fairly thin, yet thicker than many of our other glazes.
- I applied in dollops here and there and let it run down the sides of the cake.
- If the glaze is too cool and thick, you can warm it just a few seconds at a time in the microwave (or wrap the outside of the bowl with a hot cloth) to reach desired consistency.
- It's hard to see in these photos, but I slid strips of wax paper just beneath the cake on all sides before glazing.
- Doing this step will protect your cake plate or pedestal from the caramel drips as they travel down the cake. Simply remove them when you have finished glazing.
Final Details for the Brown Sugar Toffee Cake
Top off the caramel glaze with a sprinkling of toffee bits. Isn't it beautiful? I love the look of the glazed cake, and it tastes SO good.
More Pound Cakes to Try
In addition to today's Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake, we have several other pound cake recipes for you to put on your must-bake list!
Some of our most popular are our Strawberry Pound Cake, Buttermilk Pound Cake, and Lemon Pound Cake.
Enjoy the Recipe!
Thanks so much for stopping by, we hope that you enjoy the recipe!
If you love caramel cakes, add these delicious recipes to your list as well!: Caramel Italian Cream Cake, Toffee Pecan Caramel Cake, Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake, and Caramel Vanilla Latte Cake!
If you give the Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake a try, please leave a comment and photo below! We would love to hear from you.
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 3 sticks (339g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400g) brown sugar, packed into cup
- 1 cup (200g) white sugar
- 5 large eggs, room temperature (If in a hurry, place them in a bowl of warm water.)
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour (See notes)
- 1 teaspoon (4g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 cup (242g) heavy cream
- 2 teaspoon (8)g vanilla extract
- 1 8 oz (226g) bag of toffee bits
Caramel Icing
- ½ stick (57g) unsalted butter
- ½ cup (100g) packed light brown sugar
- ⅓ cup (80g) heavy cream or whipping cream
- 1 cup (120g) confectioners sugar (measure, then sift)
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 tablespoon (18g) light corn syrup (optional but helps to prevent glaze from becoming grainy)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan
- In a medium bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and salt to combine, set aside for later
- Add the butter to the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth. Gradually add the white and brown sugar and mix 3 to 5 minutes or until the mixture has lightened in color and is fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time mixing, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.
- Add the 2 teaspoons vanilla extract to the 1 cup of whipping cream, set aside.
- With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the whipping cream to the mixture of butter, sugar and eggs. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. That will be three additions of dry and two additions of wet.
- Reserve ⅓ cup of toffee bits to sprinkle on top of the cake. Fold the rest of the 8 oz bag into the cake batter.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Check your cake at about 50 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness. Bake until the toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
- Allow the cake to cool before adding the caramel icing.
For the Caramel Icing
- Combine butter, heavy cream, salt, corn syrup, and brown sugar in small saucepan. Stirring constantly, bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Once it begins to boil, remove from the and continue stirring until sugar dissolves.
- Cool for 10-15 minutes. (We cooled ours in the refrigerator) Gradually whisk in the sifted confectioners sugar a little at a time-- we found it easier to do this with a wire whisk.
- Allow the caramel icing to cool to desired consistency, it thickens as it cools. Spoon over the cooled cake.
- Sprinkle ⅓ cup (or desired amount) of toffee bits over the caramel glaze.
Notes
- Baking times may vary depending on a number of factors, including the size of bundt or tube pan you are using for this recipe. If you are using a pan that is smaller than 10 inches, be careful not to overfill. There should be a minimum of 1 ¼ inch space from the top of the cake batter to the top of the pan.
- The glazing step can be messy. If your glaze is soft enough that it will run to the bottom of the cake, you can cut strips of wax paper to slide just beneath each side of the cake before glazing. Remove after glazing.
- This cake can be frozen for up to three months. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap followed by foil. Don't forget to write the date on the foil ;0) You can freeze leftover slices individually as well. To thaw the whole cake, leave wrapped on the counter for 30-45 minutes before removing the wrapping (this ensures that any condensation will form on the wrapping rather than the cake).
OMGosh! That looks and sounds heavenly :-)
I’ve made this a number of times, it comes out delicious except for the fact that the crust comes out very hard. What can I do to stop this from happening?