Cherry Pound Cake (with Coconut Frosting)
MilWe have a delicious Cherry Pound Cake to share! This tender cake is so moist and has wonderful cherry flavor. If you love pound cakes (or cherry cakes), this recipe is for you.
You can enjoy this flavorful cherry pound cake just as it is, fresh from the oven- or you can dress it with a simple vanilla glaze or frosting.
We decided to frost our cake with a luscious coconut cream cheese frosting followed with a blanket of shredded coconut! What a wonderful flavor pairing this is, and it looks beautiful too!
How to Make Cherry Pound Cake
**You can find the full, printable recipe towards the end of this post but here is a quick rundown of our process:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan. Lower the oven rack to the next to lowest position.
- Flour Mixture: In a separate bowl whisk the flour and baking powder to combine, set aside for later.
- Butter & Sugar: Cream the butter with the paddle attachment in your stand mixer. Slowly add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy (this takes about 3-5 minutes)
- Eggs: Add the room temperature eggs one at a time blending after each to incorporate.
- Milk Mixture: In a small bowl, combine milk, cherry juice, vanilla extract and cherry extract.
- Alternating Dry and Wet Ingredients: While mixing the butter, sugar, and egg mixture on low speed, add the flour mixture to the bowl alternately with the milk mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (three additions of dry ingredients, two additions of wet).
- Cherries: Fold in the chopped maraschino cherries.
- Time to Bake! Pour batter into prepared bundt or tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Bake times may vary and so keep an eye on the cake in the final minutes.
- This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.
- Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before flipping out onto wire rack.
Decorating the Cherry Pound Cake
We often decorate our pound cakes with a simple glaze, a dollop of whipped cream, or fruit. Today, we're doing things a little differently because we wanted to bring in a little coconut for a delicious cherry coconut combination.
I applied our coconut cream cheese frosting (super easy and flavorful) to the cooled cherry pound cake using a small offset spatula. I spread the frosting over the entire cake from top to bottom and then covered it with shredded coconut.
Coconut covered cakes are not only beautiful, but they also come together SO quickly! I wish we could cover every cake in coconut ;0) I topped it all off with six maraschino cherries for added color.
Maraschino Cherries and Cherry Extract
This cherry pound cake is flavored with a combination of maraschino cherry juice, chopped maraschino cherries, and cherry extract. All of these ingredients work together to give our cherry pound cake wonderful cherry flavor.
The juice from the jar of the maraschino cherries has great cherry flavor and so we decided to use it in place of a portion of the milk that we normally use in our classic pound cake recipes.
Is it okay to leave out the cherry extract?
It is tempting to leave out the cherry extract and just use maraschino cherries and cherry juice in this pound cake.
However, as is often the case with using fruit juice in cake recipes, the flavor just isn't quite as strong as we'd like on it's own. The cherry extract really does make a difference in boosting the cherry flavor and so we don't recommend skipping it.
Is there an alternative to cherry extract?
In a pinch, you can also add additional cherry flavor to the cherry pound cake with cherry jell-o. Adding 4 tablespoons of cherry jell-o powder should give you the flavor that you're looking for. (It will make your pound cake a much brighter pink).
Can this Cherry Pound Cake Recipe be Frozen?
Yes it can! A big slice of cherry cake is just minutes away when you have cake slices tucked away in the freezer!
Or, if you are baking in advance, you can simply wrap the entire cake while still warm with plastic wrap, then aluminum foil. Wrapping while still warm will make it even more moist (although freezing at room temperature is fine too)!
When ready to thaw, place the wrapped cake on the kitchen counter. Condensation will form on the foil as it comes to room temperature. Then, unwrap and enjoy! The cake will taste as fresh as the day that it was baked.
You can also freeze your leftover cherry pound cake in the same way, whether wrapping and freezing the entire cake or in individual slices for a quick dessert later!
More Cherry Cake Recipes to Love
We have a few more cherry cakes and frostings to share! If you cherry desserts, don't miss these popular cherry cake recipes!
Favorite Pound Cake Recipes
We've made several pound cake recipes over the years and I love them all! If you're a fan of rich, buttery pound cakes, make sure to check out some more of these favorites!
- Classic Pound Cake Recipe
- Lemon Pound Cake
- Red Velvet Marble Pound Cake
- Strawberry Pound Cake
- Double Chocolate Pound Cake
- Peach Pound Cake
- Sour Cream Pound cake
Online Cake Tutorials and Favorite Cake Recipes
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy the cherry pound cake. If you give it a try, we would love for you to leave a comment or photo below!
Don't miss our full collection of favorite Cake Recipes and Free Cake Tutorials in our Free Recipes & Tutorials Section! We have hundreds of delicious recipes & cake videos to share with you!
Cherry Pound Cake (with Coconut Frosting)
This moist, tender cherry pound cake is delicious just as it is but we've paired it with a luscious coconut cream cheese frosting for a dessert that is sure to please!
Ingredients
- 3 sticks (339 g) unsalted butter, softened
- 3 cups (600 g) sugar
- 5 large eggs
- 3 cups (375 g) all purpose flour, (not self-rising)
- ½ teaspoon (2 g) baking powder
- ⅔ cup (146g) cherry juice from a 10 ounce bottle of maraschino cherries, if there is not enough juice to reach ⅔ cup, supplement with milk. Reserve the cherries.
- Drained/reserved maraschino cherries mentioned above, chopped into small pieces
- ⅓ cup milk (80g)
- 1 teaspoon (4 g) vanilla
- 1 ½ teaspoons (6g) cherry extract (we like Watkins which can often be found at Walmart or online.)
For the Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting
- 2 sticks (1 cup) (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened - do not microwave
- 2 (8oz.) packages cream cheese (452g. is the total gram weight) use full fat cream cheese, slightly softened. Using reduced fat will cause the frosting to be too soft
- 1 ½ teaspoons (6g) coconut extract (adjust to your liking)
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
- 6 to 6 ½ cups ( 747g) powdered sugar
- pinch salt
Decoration
- 14 oz (396g) package of sweetened coconut onto the top and sides of the cake (We used about ¾ of the bag).
- 6 Marachino Cherries with Stems for the Top of the Cake
Instructions
- Grease and flour a tube pan. Lower the oven rack to the next to lowest position. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- In a separate bowl whisk the flour and baking powder to combine, set aside for later.
- Cream the butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer, gradually add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time blending after each to incorporate.
- In a small bowl, combine milk, cherry juice, vanilla extract and cherry extract.
- While mixing the butter, sugar, and egg mixture on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk mixture to the butter, sugar, egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (three additions of dry ingredients, two additions of wet).
- Fold in the chopped maraschino cherries.
- Pour batter into prepared bundt or tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached
- This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.
- Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before flipping out onto wire rack.
Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting
- Add the butter to the mixing bowl and mix until smooth.
- Add the cream cheese that has been cut into small to medium size pieces, beating with the butter until well blended and smooth.
- Add the coconut and vanilla extracts
- Slowly add the powdered sugar, beating until smooth. Do not beat above medium speed or for too long. The longer you beat the softer the frosting becomes. If it becomes too soft to pipe, just refrigerate for a short while.
- Use the frosting while it is still chilled. If it becomes too soft, refrigerate to firm it up for 10-15 minutes or until it reaches desired consistency.
Assembly of Cake
Allow the cake to cool completely. Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting. Press coconut into the frosting and top with maraschino cherries.
So great to be back!
That looks incredible!
What a wonderful combination! Very clever ;-) Looks and sounds delish!
@ProfessorCupcake- Thanks!! Happy to have you back! xo
@MsGF- Thank you Teri! You'll have to make it GF style ;0)
Is there a reason imitation cherry extract is preferred in the cake versus using something along the lines of OliveNation Pure Cherry Extract? I know every once in a while there is a reason why using a higher end product just does not produce the right result in cooking and baking. I know it stated Watkins was preferred so since I try to steer clear of imitation vanilla I usually try to with other flavors. However before I do that with cherry I just want to be sure its the best way to go. Thanks
Hi Pamela, There is no problem using your favorite brand. We were just letting people know the brands that we have used. I think Olive Nation should work well in the recipe. I hope you will enjoy the cake.
Exactly how many cherries are used in the actual cake, the whole bottle? It doesn’t specify. Want to make this tonight ,
I would really appreciate some clarity. Also, will a Bundt pan work?
Hi Sandra, If you wish you can reserve 6 to 8 whole cherries for a "top of cake" decoration. All of the remaining cherries in the bottle are chopped and used in the cake batter. Hope you will enjoy the cake.