Caramel Espresso Pound Cake

This decadent Caramel Espresso Pound Cake is very soft with a fine crumb and fantastic flavor.

Keep this dessert in mind for the coffee or pound cake lovers in your life! The espresso and caramel complement each other perfectly, just as with our layered Caramel Vanilla Latte cake. We hope you enjoy it!

How to Make Caramel Espresso Pound Cake

This scratch caramel espresso pound cake is surprisingly simple to make! You can find the full, printable recipe at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick look at our steps.

• Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
• Dissolve 1½ tablespoons of instant espresso granules in 1 tablespoon of hot water and set aside.
• Dry Ingredients: In a separate bowl whisk the cake flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon for 30 seconds to combine. Set aside for later.
• Wet Ingredients: Add the vanilla extract and coffee/water mixture to a cup of buttermilk and set aside.

• Using an electric mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer) mix the softened butter on medium speed in a mixing bowl until smooth. Gradually add the white sugar and brown sugar and mix until lightened in color and fluffy -about 4 to 5 minutes.
• Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients three times and the buttermilk mixture twice. Mix just until blended.

• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary and so peek in as it approaches the 1 hour mark. If the top of the cake begins to get too dark, cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil.

• Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out onto serving plate. Also, cool the cake before glazing with caramel.

Caramel Glaze

While the dark brown sugar in this cake recipe imparts a nice caramel flavor, the homemade caramel glaze takes it to another level.

If you've never made caramel sauce before, you'll find that it is actually very easy, and the flavor is divine! Store-bought caramel is an option too if you prefer! However, the consistency is usually a bit more thin. In this case, you may like to drizzle the slices with caramel before serving.

Our caramel glaze is a combination of melted butter, brown sugar, heavy cream, and a pinch of salt. You can find the recipe at the bottom of this post.

The mixture is brought to a boil in a saucepan, then cooled to a simmer for about six minutes on the stovetop. The caramel is very thin while hot, but thickens up to a better consistency for glazing as it cools.

We've used this caramel on many of our cakes, including our snickerdoodle cake, banana pound cake, and apple bundt cake just to name a few!

Recipe FAQs

More Pound Cakes

In addition to other caramel cakes, like scratch caramel cake and toffee pecan caramel cake, and coffee flavored cakes like our mocha toffee crunch cake, we've also made many pound cake recipes!

In fact, we've never met a pound cake recipe that we didn't love. Here are just a few more of our go-to recipes! You can also check out our collection of pound cake recipes!

Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this Caramel Espresso Pound Cake as much as we have. Whether you are in need of a birthday cake recipe, potluck dessert, or a cake "just because", this one is sure to please!

We hope you'll check out our full collection of favorite cake recipes (which includes cakes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes)!

If you'd like to learn how to decorate cakes, we'd love for you to check out our section of hundreds of free cake decorating tutorials as well. You'll find lots of techniques for any skill level of cake decorating. Enjoy scrolling through!

Caramel Espresso Pound Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This decadent Caramel Espresso Pound Cake has the perfect balance of caramel and espresso flavor. This delicious cake is extremely moist with a velvety soft texture.

Prep Time: 15 minutes mins

Cook Time: 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15

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Ingredients

• ▢ 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened (339g)
• ▢ 2 cups sugar (400g)
• ▢ 1 cup brown sugar (200g) (light or dark brown. We used dark.)
• ▢ 5 large eggs, room temperature (place in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes if in a hurry)
• ▢ 3 cups Cake Flour (342g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon baking powder (2g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoons cinnamon (3g)
• ▢ 1 cup Buttermilk (235g)
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract (8g)
• ▢ 1½ Tablespoons Instant Espresso (or instant coffee) Granules dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water. (6g of granules)

Caramel Glaze

• ▢ ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
• ▢ cup brown sugar (200g) (Either light or dark brown)
• ▢ ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
• ▢ 1 tablespoon light corn syrup (18g) (This helps to prevent sugar crystals from forming)

Instructions

• Grease and flour a bundt pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
• Dissolve 1½ tablespoons of instant espresso granules in 1 tablespoon of hot water and set aside.
• In a separate bowl whisk the cake flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon for 30 seconds to combine. Set aside for later.
• Add the vanilla extract and coffee/water mixture to a cup of buttermilk and set aside.
• Using an electric mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer) mix the softened butter on medium speed in a mixing bowl until smooth.
• Gradually add the white sugar and brown sugar and mix until lightened in color and fluffy -about 4 to 5 minutes.
• Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients three times and the buttermilk mixture twice. Mix just until blended.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary and so peek in as it approaches the 1 hour mark. If the top of the cake begins to get too dark, cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil.
• This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.
• Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning out onto serving plate. All the cake to cool before glazing.

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.
• Apply the thickened glaze to the cooled cake either with a spoon, or for more control, spoon it into a disposable piping bag (or ziplock bag) with the tip snipped away.
• Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.

Notes

This cake can be baked in advance, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and foil, and frozen for up to three months.

To thaw, move from the freezer to the refrigerator, still wrapped, the day before you need it. Move to the kitchen counter the next morning and continue to warm to room temperature.

We used a bundt pan with a baking capacity of 12 cups (although this recipe makes less than that, at 8 cups of batter).

If you are using a smaller bundt pan, the baking time will likely need to be increased as the amount of batter in the pan will be more deep. Be careful not to overfill-- the general rule of thumb is not to fill the pan more than ¾ full of cake batter. We like to allow at least 1.25 inches from the top of the batter to the top edge of the pan.

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