Blackberry Pound Cake Recipe

This blackberry pound cake recipe features swirls of blackberry batter in a traditional, buttery vanilla pound cake.  It's a delightful summer twist on a classic cake that takes advantage of the bountiful blackberries that are in season now.

I'm lucky to live near a ton of wild blackberries, and have friends with lots of blackberry bushes on their allotments.  I have pretty much an infinite supply of blackberries for a good portion of the summer.

I absolutely love fresh blackberries, and I love coming up with new ways to use these fruits during berry season.   This year, I decided to start with my grandma's amazing-but-basic pound cake recipe (one of my favorite cakes ever!) and turn it into an amazing blackberry cake by giving it a swirl of blackberry batter and fresh blackberry glaze.

The experiment was a stunning success.  This recipe makes two bread-loaf sized cakes or one blackberry bundt cake.

Blackberry Vanilla Pound Cake Ingredients:

• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup blackberry puree

Blackberry Glaze Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup blackberry puree
• 1/2 to 1 cup powdered sugar, to taste
• pinch of citric acid or lemon juice (optional)

I use my food mill to make easy work of making seedless blackberry puree.  This is a kitchen gadget that absolutely earns its spot in my kitchen cabinets.   If you don't have one, you can push the soft, ripe fruit through a fine-mesh strainer, but that's SO much harder than just using a food mill.  I absolutely love this device.

To make the pound cake batter, first cream the butter and sugar.  Beat until the sugar mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the salt and baking soda and mix well.  Add three cups of the flour (reserving 1/2 a cup for later) and the cup of buttermilk to the mixture, alternating between adding the dry ingredients and wet.   You'll end up with a cake batter that looks like the picture above.

Remove two cups of the basic pound cake batter and put it in a separate bowl.  Add the reserved 1/2 cup of flour and the 1/2 cup of blackberry puree.  If you don't have any fresh berries, you can substitute blackberry jam. It will be a little sweeter and a little more difficult to mix in smoothly, but it works.

I used nonstick bread pans to bake these cakes, so I didn't need to do anything special to prepare my pan.  It always comes out nicely.  But if you don't have nonstick pans or just want a little extra insurance, cut a rectangle of parchment paper to place on the bottom of the pan before adding the cake batter.  Just remember to remove it after baking!

Place a layer of the plain batter in the bottom of your cake pan (whether using bread loaf pans like I did, or a prepared bundt pan).  Then add spoonfuls of the two types of remaining cake batter, alternating and adding in random dollops until all of the batter has been distributed.

Use a bamboo skewer to swirl the blackberry mixture and vanilla batter together.

Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 300 and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until a toothpick stuck in the center of the cake comes out clean.

How to Make Fresh Blackberry Glaze:

Combine about 1/3 of a cup of blackberry puree with about a cup of powdered sugar.  You can use more or less sugar to your taste, and it's really not precise.  Just the fruit puree and powdered sugar makes an excellent glaze.  But I like to add a little something extra to boost that bright fruit flavor:  citric acid.  After your glaze has reached the consistency you want, add just a small pinch of citric acid and mix well.  A little goes a LONG way, and you can always taste and add more if you need to.  It adds a bright, sour flavor, which, in small quantities, enhances the fruit flavor amazingly.  Add too much and it will taste like a sour patch kid.  You can also add some fresh lemon juice if you don't have citric acid on hand.  Lemon juice has natural citric acid and will do the same thing, though because it is a liquid, it will thin your glaze.  That's why I prefer to use citric acid for this purpose.

Pour or use a pastry brush to top the pound cake with the blackberry glaze.  

You can use any leftover glaze to pour over slices of your cake when you serve, too, to give an extra burst of blackberry flavor.  I didn't do that in the picture above because I wanted to show off that beautiful swirl in the center of the cake and tender, moist crumb of the texture of the cake, but I did eat a piece drizzled with extra glaze later, and it was delicious!  Or just serve with whole blackberries.  Easy, fruity deliciousness either way.

You can use a handfull of blackberries to decorate the top of the cake or leave it plain.  Adding the ripe blackberries on top (as seen in some of the earlier pictures) looked beautiful, but did make it harder to store and serve the cake.  

Printable Blackberry Pound Cake Recipe:

Want a one page, printable, PDF version of this blackberry pound cake recipe?  Just click the image below to dlownload the PDF to your device or print directly.

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