Chai–Spiced Pound Cake (Reduced Sugar)

Why This Recipe Works

Traditionally made with a pound of each of four basic ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, and eggs), a perfect pound cake should have a fine, even crumb and a velvety texture. But significantly reducing the sugar meant that we needed to rethink the classic formula to maintain the integrity of this iconic dessert. First, we needed to work on the flavor. We chose Sucanat as our sweetener, since tasters enjoyed its nuanced molasses notes. But the cake still tasted a bit bland, so we turned to our spice cabinet. The right combination of warm spices gave our cake a bold, chai-inspired flavor profile that jazzed up the cake considerably. To fix the dense and dry texture, we first tested mixing methods: a bowl method using melted butter, a standard creaming method in which we combined softened butter with the Sucanat, and a reverse-creaming method, in which we combined the Sucanat with the dry ingredients and then added softened butter in small chunks. Tasters preferred the even texture and good rise produced by reverse creaming. To avoid a greasy cake, we reduced the amount of butter and added milk to make up for any lost richness. Traditional pound cake recipes contain no chemical leavener, but we found that adding just a small amount of baking powder provided much better and more reliable rise. But the leavener had a negative effect as well: The texture was now too light and delicate for a proper pound cake. Our original recipe called for cake flour, which had prevented the cake from becoming tough. But switching to all-purpose flour for our low-sugar pound cake worked like a charm, giving us just the plush, fine crumb we wanted.