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–+ servings
Slice of lemon cake with white icing on a plate, accompanied by a dollop of whipped cream and a lime slice.

Key Lime Pound Cake

For this recipe for key lime pound cake, you're making this from scratch versus using a cake mix. But don't worry: it's an easy recipe that you'll bake in a bundt pan and finish out with a delicious, citrus glaze. This will easily become your favorite cake to make for all occasions.
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Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Cooling Time 15 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Servings 12

Equipment

Ingredients
  

Key Lime Cake

  • 3 cups sugar
  • 1 cup butter softened
  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 6 eggs
  • 1 cup cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon lime zest
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For Glaze Ingredients

  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 tablespoon key lime juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
 

  • Preheat the oven to 300 F.
  • Grease and flour a 9-10 inch angel food cake pan, tube cake or bundt pan.
  • In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the sugar, butter, and shortening together until light and fluffy.
  • In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt to make the cake flour. Then, sift the cake flour and baking powder together.
  • To the butter mixture, beat in the the eggs, cream, key lime juice, lime zest and vanilla extract.
  • Next beat in the cake flour mixture until just combined.
  • Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
  • Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  • Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes; remove cake from the pan to cool completely.
  • While the cake is cooling, make the glaze.
  • Whisk the powdered sugar, key lime juice and vanilla extract in a bowl.
  • Immediately spoon glaze over the top and sides of the cake once it has cooled.
  • Serve, slice and enjoy.

Notes

While it is always best to use fresh limes for this recipe — and key limes at that — if you don't have fresh limes, you can use bottle lime juice.
In fact, if you don't have limes at all or even lime juice, you could modify this recipe to become a lemon pound cake recipe. Just swap lemon juice for lime juice and lemon zest for lemon juice.
The donut-shaped cake pan that I'm using for this recipe? It goes by three different names:
    • bundt cake pan
    • tube pan
    • angel food cake pan
I know that for me, I associated bundt cakes with the waves on the top. But it turns out there are smooth surface bundt cake pans, which most people call an angel food cake pan. Another way to describe this is a tube pan, because it has a metal tube in the middle that provides heat to the center of the cake and helps it cook faster. This article on the different types of baking pans explains things a bit better.

Disclaimer

Please note that nutrient values, if included with the recipe, are estimates only. Variations can occur due to product availability/substitution and manner of food preparation. Nutrition may vary based on methods of origin, preparation, freshness of ingredients, and other factors.

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