Maple Pound Cake

This decadent Maple Pound Cake is extremely moist with a fine crumb and fantastic maple flavor.

We topped this delicious fall cake with a homemade caramel glaze and a sprinkling of pecans.

Why we Love It

We love this flavorful maple pecan cake! Here are a few reasons why:

• We love maple anything! (See our scratch Maple Cake, Maple Carrot Cake, and Maple Toffee Cake!)
• Rich maple flavor, thanks to maple syrup and maple extract
• Delicious combination of maple and caramel.
• Easy to make
• Perfect for a fall birthday cake recipe, easy potluck dessert, Thanksgiving dessert, or any other fall event!

Maple Pound Cake Ingredients

Here is a look at the star ingredients for this recipe! (We are featuring ingredients for the cake, as the glaze is optional.)

As always, you can find the full recipe card at the bottom of the post!

Pure Maple Syrup adds wonderful flavor to the cake. We used dark maple syrup as the flavor is more rich, but you could use amber maple syrup if you'd like!

Brown Sugar adds additional moisture and flavor to the cake! The brown sugar flavor goes perfectly with maple.

Maple extract is optional but it adds a really nice boost of maple!

Buttermilk and Cake Flour both work to make our cake's texture extra soft, moist, and tender.

How to Make Maple Pound Cake

You can find the full, printable recipe card at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick look at our steps!

• First, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.   Grease and flour a bundt pan or tube pan (see Notes). This cake makes about 8.5 cups of batter.
• In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the cake flour, baking powder and salt to combine. Set aside.

• Add the butter to the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth.  Gradually add the white sugar and brown sugar and mix 3 to 5 minutes or until the mixture has lightened in color and is fluffy.

• Next, add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.

• In a medium sized bowl or measuring cup, combine these wet ingredients: maple syrup, buttermilk, maple extract, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture to the mixture of butter, sugar, and eggs.  Begin and end with the dry ingredients.  We like to do three additions of dry and two additions of wet. Mix just until incorporated.

• Pour or scoop the maple pound cake batter into a tube pan or bundt pan. This cake recipe makes about 8.5 cups of batter. We used a tube pan with 12 cups baking capacity. If using a smaller bundt pan or tube pan, make sure that you have at least 1 ¼ inch from the top of the batter to the top edge of the pan. (Don't fill pan more than ¾ full).

• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes.  Baking times may vary! Check your maple pound cake after around 50-55 minutes.  Bake until the toothpick  comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. The cake should also spring back when lightly touched.

• Allow the maple pound cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.  (It bakes up with little to no dome.)

• Allow the cake to cool before adding the caramel glaze.

For the Caramel Glaze

Many of our pound cake recipes call for a delicious caramel glaze. Some great examples are our popular Banana Pound Cake, easy Apple Bundt Cake, and Toffee Pecan Bundt Cake.

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.

You could add a bit of maple extract if you'd like, but we have so much maple flavor in our cake already that we didn't feel that we needed the extra boost. The caramel is delicious!

The 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. We often pop it in the refrigerator if we are in a hurry.

Decorating the Cake

Once the maple pound cake has completely cooled, and the caramel glaze has cooled to the desired consistency, it is time to put it all together.

Sometimes we use a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away to apply our glaze.

However, today we spooned the caramel sauce over the top of the cake, allowing it to spill over the edge here and there.

Then, we topped it off with a sprinkling of crushed pecans. We drizzled a bit more caramel over the top of the pecans.

Maple, caramel, and pecans are the perfect combination! We hope that you enjoy the recipe.

More Fall Cake Recipes

We have many more fall cake recipes to share with you! You can find all of our cakes in our Cake Recipes section, including delicious cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes.

Some of our most popular fall cakes recipes are Pumpkin Spice Cake, Sweet Potato Cake, Gingerbread Cake, and Caramel Cake.

Recipe FAQs

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In addition to our section of cake recipes, we hope that you will check out our collection of hundreds of cake decorating tutorials! You'll find all sorts of cake designs and tutorials for birthday cake ideas, baby shower cakes, bridal shower cakes, and more.

Maple Pound Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This decadent Maple Pound Cake has rich maple flavor and an ultra fine crumb. We've topped it with homemade caramel sauce and a sprinkling of pecans.

Prep Time: 12 minutes mins

Cook Time: 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 16 servings

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Ingredients

• ▢ 3 sticks (339g) unsalted butter, softened
• ▢ 1 ¾ cups (350g) brown sugar We used light brown sugar. (If not using a digital scale, make sure to pack the brown sugar into your measuring cups.)
• ▢ 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
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4g) baking powder
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
• ▢ 1 cup (235g) Buttermilk (We use whole buttermilk rather than low fat)
• ▢ ½ cup maple syrup (we used pure dark maple syrup)
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (8g) maple extract (optional)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4)g vanilla extract

Caramel Icing

• ▢ ½ stick (57g) unsalted butter
• ▢ 1 cup (217g) light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup)
• ▢ ½ cup (126g) heavy cream
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon (18g) light corn syrup

Topping

• ▢ Crushed Pecans, optional

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.   Grease and flour a tube pan (See notes)
• In a medium  bowl whisk the cake 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.
• In a medium sized bowl or measuring cup, combine the maple syrup, buttermilk, maple extract, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture to the mixture of butter, sugar and eggs.  Begin and end with the dry ingredients.  We like to do three additions of dry and two additions of wet. Mix just until incorporated.
• Pour or scoop the maple pound cake batter into the prepared tube pan or bundt pan. This cake recipe makes about 8.5 cups of batter. We used a tube pan with 12 cups baking capacity. If using a smaller bundt pan or tube pan, make sure that you have a least 1 ¼ inch from the top of the batter to the top edge of the pan. (Don't fill pan more than ¾ full).
• 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

• 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.

Decorating the Cake

• Once the cake and caramel have cooled, you can spoon the caramel over the top of the cake. We topped ours with crushed pecans and drizzled with a bit more caramel.

Notes

Substitute for Buttermilk: No Buttermilk? Here is a substitution: Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar to a measuring cup. To that, add milk to the 1 cup mark. Stir and allow to sit for a minute or two to thicken.

 

Substitution for Cake Flour: Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour: For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend.

 

Bundt Pan: Our bundt pan has a baking capacity of 12 cups and measures about 10 inches. If you are working with a smaller pan, it will take longer to bake. Be careful not to overfill. (General rule of thumb: don't fill pan past ¾ full)

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