Gluten-Free Lemon Pound Cake

Why This Recipe Works

Classic recipes for lemon pound cake recipe contain no leavener—just flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. Using the test kitchen’s favorite recipe as our guide, we began our testing by simply subbing in our gluten-free flour blend for all-purpose flour. The resulting cake was overly tender (it crumbled too easily), greasy, and gummy. Adding a bit of xanthan gum improved the structure so the cake didn’t crumble. Reducing the amount of butter (the classic recipe contains two sticks) helped with the greasiness, but it also made the cake dry. We tried oil, but tasters rejected this swap—pound cake must taste buttery. We switched gears and looked to replace some of the butter with something else. After several rounds of testing, we ended up swapping out one stick of butter for an equal amount of cream cheese. Unlike butter, which separates into water and fat in the oven, cream cheese—which is much more stable—didn’t cause the greasiness problem that plagued our all-butter gluten-free pound cakes. To get the most lemon flavor, we pulsed the zest in the food processor with the sugar. Since we were already using our food processor, we found that we could mix the batter with it as well, as it ensured a perfect emulsification of the eggs, sugar, and melted butter. The crumb was still a tad gummy and heavy, but adding a small amount of baking powder increased lift and produced a consistent crumb with just the right density.