Butter Pecan Pound Cake
This heavenly Butter Pecan Pound Cake is moist and tender with a fine crumb and wonderful butter pecan flavor.
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
We love pound cakes, and today's recipe is a great new addition! Here are just a few reasons to love this recipe!
- Wonderful flavor from buttered pecans and brown sugar.
- Easy to Make
- Fine Crumb
- Delicious cake for fall birthdays, Thanksgiving dessert, potlucks, and more.
Ingredients for the Butter Pecan Pound Cake
Here is a quick look at the star ingredients or today's recipe!
Sour Cream adds richness without thinning the batter. We have many cakes containing sour cream, including our Cranberry Orange Cake, easy Chocolate Mousse Cake, and more!
Light Brown Sugar: The flavor pairs perfectly with the buttered pecans. The molasses in brown sugar also adds additional moisture to the cake.
Unsalted Butter Adds a buttery flavor and richness to this dessert. We like to use unsalted butter because it gives us more control over the amount of salt that we add to the recipe.
Cake Flour We often use Cake Flour in our recipes (rather than all purpose flour) as it contains less protein. This results in less gluten formation which makes for a softer, more tender cake.
Pecans The roasted, buttered pecans add wonderful flavor to this recipe! We've added the finely chopped, roasted pecans to the cake batter as well as the top of the cake.
*Caramel glaze ingredients are listed in the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
How to Make Butter Pecan Pound Cake
The first step of making this cake recipe is roasting the pecans!
- Set oven to 350 degrees. Put three Tablespoons butter on baking sheet. Once melted, (melts quickly) add 2 ½ cups pecans and toss to coat. Spread out pecans and bake 6 to 8 minutes, Stir, halfway through. They roast quickly!
- Measure out 1 ½ cups of the pecans and chop them finely. Set aside. These will be used in the batter. You could use a food processor for this or even a ziplock bag and rolling pin.
The remaining butter pecans will be added to the top of the glazed cake.
For the Cake
- Grease and flour a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the cake flour, salt, and baking powder for 30 seconds to combine. Set aside for later.
- Cream the softened butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer (if using a stand mixer). Gradually add the brown and white sugar and mix on medium until light and fluffy for 3 to 5 minutes.
- Next, add the eggs one at a time blending after each addition to incorporate.
- Combine the vanilla extract, milk, and sour cream in a medium bowl or measuring cup and set aside.
- While mixing at low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream mixture to the butter, sugar, & egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (I add the flour mixture three times and the sour cream mixture twice). Mix just until incorporated.
- Fold in the 1 ½ cups finely chopped pecans. Scoop batter into the pan and smooth over the top with a spoon to even it out.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 60-70 minutes -Baking times may vary and so check on the cake as it nears the 1 hour mark. When an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs attached, it is ready.
- This makes approximately 8-8.5 cups of batter.
- Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out.
The Caramel Glaze
We love caramel glaze with this Butter Pecan Pound Cake recipe! This simple glaze is prepared in a saucepan. It is a combination of brown sugar, butter, heavy cream, vanilla extract, a bit of light corn syrup, and a pinch of salt.
(The light corn syrup in the recipe prevents grittiness!)
The caramel glaze will thicken as it cools. To speed things along, you can pour it into a long casserole dish so that it will cool more quickly.
You can refrigerate for several minutes if you would like to speed along the cooling process!
Decorating the Cake
Once the cake has cooled, and the caramel sauce has cooled to the desired amount, you can spoon the caramel over the cake.
For more control, you can also apply the caramel glaze with a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.
Top with the butter pecans (chopped, whole, or both)!
Recipe FAQs
More Pecan Cakes
We hope that you enjoy this delicious cake! We've made many pecan cake recipes over the years. Some of our most popular are our layered Butter Pecan Cake, easy Butter Pecan Cupcakes, Chocolate Pecan Pie Cake, Italian Cream Cake, and Hummingbird Cake just to name a few!
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!
Butter Pecan Pound Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
For the Buttered Pecans (To be used in batter as well as on top of cake)
- 2½ cups whole pecans (We will roast, then finely chop) (285g)
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (14g)
- pinch of salt (optional)
For the Cake
- 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened (339g)
- 1 cup white/granulated sugar (200g)
- 2 cups light brown sugar (400g)
- 5 large eggs, room temperature (If in a hurry, place eggs in a bowl of warm water for five minutes to bring to room temperature.)
- 3 cups cake flour (342g)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder (2g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
- 1 cup sour cream (242g)
- ⅓ cup Milk (68g) (We use 2 percent or whole milk.)
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (12g)
- 1½ cups Chopped, Finely Chopped Roasted Pecans (165g)
Caramel Glaze
- ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
- 1 cup light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup) (217g)
- ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
- 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)
Instructions
For the Butter Pecans
- Set oven to 350 degrees. Put 3 Tablespoons butter on baking sheet. When melted, (melts quickly) add 2 ½ cups pecans and toss to coat. Spread out pecans and bake 6 to 8 minutes, Stir, halfway through. They roast quickly. Sprinkle lightly with salt if you would like.
- Measure out 1 ½ cups of the pecans and chop them finely. Set aside. These will be used in the batter. The rest will eventually be added to the top of the glazed cake.
For the Cake
- Grease and flour a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. See Notes.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the cake flour, salt, and baking powder for 30 seconds to combine. Set aside for later.
- Mix the butter with the paddle attachment (if using a stand mixer) on medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the brown and white sugar and beat until light and fluffy 3 to 5 minutes.
- Next, add the eggs one at a time blending after each addition to incorporate.
- In a medium bowl or measuring cup, combine the vanilla extract, milk, and sour cream and set aside.
- While mixing at low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream mixture to the butter, sugar, & egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (I add the flour mixture three times and the sour cream twice). Mix just until incorporated.
- Gently stir in the 1 ½ cups finely chopped pecans. Scoop batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth over the top with the back of a spoon to even it out.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 60-70 minutes. Baking times may vary and so check on the cake as it nears the 1 hour mark. When an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs attached, it is ready.
- This makes approximately 8-8.5 cups of batter.
- Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out.
For the Caramel Glaze
- Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.
- Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan.
- Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low.Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling.
- After 6 minutes, remove from heat.Keep in mind that the caramel with thicken up a bit as it cools.
- You can pour it into a long glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.
Assembling the Cake
- Once the caramel and cake have cooled, you can either spoon the caramel over the cake with a spoon, or pipe it onto the cake using a disposable piping bag (with the tip snipped away).
- Top with desired amount of remaining buttered pecans (either whole or chopped).
- Store the cake at room temperature in an airtight container or under a cake dome for 2-3 days.
That looks incredible! Perfect for Fall. I love your little nut grinder too :-) Awesome as always! :-)
This looks so delicious I would love a piece right now!
I will be making this for two and it is a big cake. Could I cut the recipe down in half and if so what type of cake pan do you suggest? I don't have a small bundt pan, so would it work in say round 8" pans?
Thank you for sharing
Hi Carol! Glad you plan to make the recipe! We haven't tried halving this specific recipe but it should be fine! That should give you around 4 cups of batter or so, which you could divide between two 8 inch cake pans. I would bake at 350, and start checking for doneness after about 20 minutes and adjust time as needed.
Carol Y you could use a loaf pan instead of a tube or layer pans.
I haven't made this yet but it looks delicious. I noticed many of your cake recipes use a lot of butter and butter has nearly doubled in price here in Canada as you probably already know. for this reason I simply cannot afford to doing much baking that requires a lot of butter. Would it work if I used half butter and half Crisco in the cake part at least?
thanks 😊
Hi Jody, that is a good question. Most of our layer cakes have 1 1/2 or 2 sticks of butter, but our pound cakes almost always have 3.
We haven't experimented with using Crisco in in place of butter for our pound cakes. If you give it a try, let us know how it goes!
My cake turned out great, however, my caramel came out thin. I used the exact ingredients and measurements. What went wrong?😢
Hi Inman, glad that you liked the cake! As for the caramel, it would either be that it didn't simmer quite long enough (6 minutes is what we do) or didn't cool long enough. It takes a good while for it to completely cool and thicken. If it is at all warm (or if the cake is still warm), it will likely be on the thin side. Hope you'll try it again sometime!
Can Walnuts be used instead of pecans?
Hi Cindy! I don't see why not- a walnut cake sounds good to me! :0)
This is a 5 star cake. My hubby found this recipe and passed to me because he is a huge pecan fan. Me not so much.
I've made the cake three times now and each time I find that I like it more than the last.
The cake is very moist and pecans give it a nice crunch.
The one thing I have problems with is the caramel glaze. Since I've made it 3 times I've had 3 different experiences. One came out ok but the others were thin. I cooked them longer and higher Temps but nothing helped? Also my caramel has a darker color. I used light brown sugar. All ingredients were same brands. Any thoughts?
Can you please explain why some recipes call for heavy cream but this was is calling for sour cream and milk? Is that a preference or would this recipe not take right with heavy cream?
Thank you!
Hi Nadia- We have four or five basic versions of pound cake that we change up with different flavors. We love them all ;0) -- Some use milk or heavy cream, others use buttermilk, or cream cheese, or sour cream.
If you prefer pound cakes that use heavy cream, our Brown Sugar Toffee Pound Cake is very similar to this one- you can just add in the buttered pecans.
If it were me, I would bump up the heavy cream amount slightly as I find that crushed pecans can sometimes absorb some of the moisture. So I would probably adjust it to 1 1/4 cup or so of heavy cream if you give that version a try!
Hi! I have a quick question. Does the cake taste ok without the frosting? I'm just trying to cut a few calories/fat and don't want the topping, if the cake is good without it... thanks!
Hi Debbie, yes the cake is still very good even without the caramel glaze. hope you enjoy it ;0)
This butter pecan pound cake was delicious!!! I had to bake for an additional 20 mins but it might have been my old oven.....I added an extra 2 tsp vanilla to the cake batter, also about a cup of sifted powdered sugar to the glaze so it was more like a frosting. Loved the results and will definitely make it again.