Lemon Orange Pound Cake
This Lemon Orange Pound Cake is moist, delicious, and bursting with refreshing citrus flavor.
No matter what time of year, this is a wonderful go-to pound cake recipe that is sure to please.
We love pound cakes and have several favorites in our Cake Recipes section.
Once you make this buttery, tender cake recipe once, you'll want to come back to it again and again!
Table of Contents
How to Make Lemon Orange Pound Cake
You can find the full, printable lemon orange pound cake recipe towards the bottom of this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and grease & flour a 10 or 12 cup bundt pan. (We used a 10 cup bundt pan).
In a separate bowl whisk the flour and baking powder, salt and the lemon and orange zest. Whisk for at least 30 seconds to combine. Set aside.
In a measuring cup or small bowl, combine the lemon juice and milk. Add the vanilla and lemon extracts. Set Aside
Cream butter with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer until smooth. Slowly add the sugar and mix for 3-5 minutes or until lightened in color and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended into the batter
Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk mixture to the butter, sugar, and eggs mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients ( We like to do three additions of dry ingredients and two of wet ingredients).
Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary, so check for doneness starting at the 50 minute mark to be on the safe side.
Simple Glaze for Pound Cake
I love to add a glaze to my pound cakes. Not only does it add an extra bit of flavor and sweetness, but it's also such a beautiful finishing touch.
For today's Lemon Orange Cake, I used both a lemon glaze and and orange glaze. These quick recipes are based on our easy vanilla glaze recipe.
I tinted the orange glaze with just a touch of orange coloring gel.
How to Apply a Simple Glaze to Pound Cakes
You can apply the glaze to pound cake with a spoon if you'd like, but for more control, we often apply it with a piping bag with the tip snipped away.
I applied the lemon glaze first (which we decided not to tint yellow), and followed with the orange glaze. I just love the look the the orange and white drips together!
After several minutes, the outer layer of the glaze will be dry to the touch.
Consistency of the Glaze
Just as with our vanilla buttercream, if your glaze is too thin, simply add a bit more sifted confectioners sugar. If it is too thick, add a touch more milk.
*Keep in mind that this is a very sweet glaze and so if you try a spoonful of it, you will think it is too sweet. However, when applied to the cake, it is just right! Each slice will only have a very thin drizzle of glaze.
Can Pound Cake be Frozen?
Yes it can! Just as with most of our cakes (from orange bundt cake to lemon pound cake, strawberry bundt cake, Lemonade Cake and more), this pound cake freezes beautifully.
Pound cakes can easily be wrapped and frozen for up to three months, and will taste as fresh as the day that they were frozen.
If you are baking in advance, allow the cake to cool, place on a cake board white still warm (If you will cover the board with foil so that it can be reused), cover with plastic wrap, aluminum foil, add the date to the outside if baking far in advance, and place in the freezer.
To thaw, we prefer to move the pound cake to the refrigerator the day before so that it has plenty of time to thaw. The next morning, move to the kitchen counter to finish thawing.
You an also freeze leftovers in the same way, or even wrap and freeze pound cake slices individually so that you'll always be ready when the pound cake cravings strike!
More Pound and Bundt Cakes!
We hope that you enjoy this delicious Lemon Orange Pound Cake! We've made many delicious pound cake recipes & bundt cake recipes over the years.
Some of our most popular bundt cakes & pound cakes are Classic Pound Cake, Strawberry Pound Cake, Rainbow Pound Cake, Blueberry Pound Cake, and Peach Pound Cake!
Lemon and Orange Cake Favorites
If you love lemon and orange, you may also love our Lemon Orange Layer Cake!
We've also made lots of lemon cakes and orange cakes over the years.
We'd love for you to keep these delicious cakes in mind the next time you are in the mood for citrus desserts!
Some of our most popular are our Orange Dreamsicle Cake, Lemon Cake from Scratch, and Orange Pineapple Cake.
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!
Lemon Orange Pound Cake
Ingredients
For the Pound Cake
- 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened (339g) (Should still hold shape yet dent when pressed.)
- 3 cups sugar (660g)
- 5 large eggs, room temperature (Place the eggs in a bowls of warm water for 5 minutes to reach room temp more quickly.)
- 3 cups all purpose flour (not self-rising) (375g)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder (2g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
- Zest of 1 orange
- Zest of 1 lemon
- ¼ Cup Lemon Juice 57g This is approximately the juice in one lemon. (If your lemon has less than ¼ cup, you can supplement with milk to reach the ¼ cup mark).
- 1 cup milk (242g)
- 1 teaspoons vanilla (4g)
- 2 teaspoons lemon extract (8g)
Lemon Glaze
- 2 cups powdered sugar (measure then sift) (220g)
- ¼ cup milk (60g)
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract (4g)
Orange Glaze
- 2 cups powdered sugar (measure then sift) (220g)
- ¼ cup milk (60g)
- 1 teaspoon orange extract (see Notes below) (4g)
- Small amount of orange food coloring we used Americolor gel color
Instructions
For the Lemon Orange Pound Cake
- Lower the oven rack to the next to lowest position. Preheat oven to 325 degrees
- Grease and flour a 10 inch bundt pan.
- In a separate bowl whisk the flour and baking powder, salt and the lemon and orange zest. Whisk for at least 30 seconds to combine. Set aside.
- In a bowl or measuring cup, add milk and lemon juice. Add the vanilla and lemon extracts. Set Aside
- Cream butter with the paddle attachment of your mixer until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes or until increased in volume, lighten in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended into the batter
- Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk mixture to the butter, sugar, and eggs mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients ( 3 additions of dry and 2 of wet).
- Double check and make sure all ingredients have been used.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check at about 50 minutes baking time and if the top is getting too dark, cover loosely with aluminum foil.
- Place on cooling rack for about 10 minutes before turning out of the pan.
For the Glazes
- We made two glazes-- an orange glaze and a lemon glaze. The instructions are the same for both.
- Combine the ingredients in a bowl and mix with a spoon until combined and smooth. If the glaze is too thick, add additional milk a teaspoon at a time until the right consistency.
- *For the orange glaze, we added a small amount of orange coloring gel.
Notes
You may need to order Orange Extract online. We use Watkins or
McCormick brands, but others should be fine also.
Yummy! :-) Sounds delish! I do love pound cake ;-) Looks terrific too!
So is it regular milk on buttermilk your ingredients list and then directions state different.
Hi Carine, We used regular whole milk. With the addition of lemon juice to milk we made buttermilk but I see how that is confusing. I have changed the text to read milk. Thanks for posting.
Hi. On the cake, can I substitute de milk by lemon juice?
can you add cream cheese to the icing an how much to each