The Perfect Chocolate Pound Cake

Let’s talk about a few of the ingredients first!

Cocoa & coffee: To boost the chocolaty flavor, use a blend of 100% dutch process cocoa and black cocoa for its rich, dark chocolate flavor. Adding instant coffee powder simply helps enhance the chocolate flavor and is undetectable after baking.

Sour cream: Using sour cream enhances the cake’s richness and provides a slight tang. It’s one of the best additions you can make to a chocolate cake so I wouldn’t recommend making substitutions.

White & brown sugar: A mixture of white and light brown sugar gives moisture to the cake, too, as well as a subtle caramel flavor.

Eggs: Too many eggs in pound cake resulted in a pound cake that was a little too spongy. More eggs made the batter wetter and increased bake times.

Baking soda versus baking powder: The cake I made with baking soda instead of baking powder retained the perfect texture and rise- perfectly dense, with just enough air in the sponge.

How to make the perfect chocolate pound cake

1. Prep your loaf pan. Line the pan with a layer of parchment paper. I use this gorgeous non-toxic loaf pan from Caraway because the cake releases like butter from the perfect non-stick sides.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl: Flour, cocoa powders, coffee powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. Cream butter and sugars. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.
4. Add eggs. Add eggs one a time, using a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure everything mixes together evenly. Lastly, add the vanilla.
5. Add the dry ingredients and sour cream. Add half the dry ingredients, add all of the sour cream, and add the remaining dry ingredients, mixing together well between each addition.
6. Bake. Pour batter into your prepared loaf pan and bake in a 350°F/177°C oven for 60-65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Cool. Allow to cool for 15 minutes, and then lift up on the parchment paper to remove loaf from pan and cool completely (preferably on a wire rack) before glazing.

Helpful tips to make perfect pound cake

• Room temperature ingredients: Eggs & butter should be room temperature when making any cake so that they don’t cease up and separate when making the batter. Pro tip: Cut the butter into smaller cubes to allow it to warm to room temperature faster.
• Sift dry ingredients: For the smoothest batter possible, sift your dry ingredients into the batter to eliminate lumps of flour, cocoa, or baking soda.
• Cool fully: Allow cake to cool fully before glazing & slicing for best results!