This high altitude maple pound cake is so incredibly soft, tender and moist, frosted with maple cream cheese buttercream. You’ll be making this maple cake with maple extract, rather than maple syrup, for a strong maple flavor that tastes like pancakes. This is a perfect cake for the holiday season!
You might also love these high altitude recipes for maple walnut white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, white chocolate maple spice cake, and iced maple leaf sugar cookies.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Perfect for the Holidays. If you love a simple bundt cake for Thanksgiving or Christmas, rather than a layer cake that you need to assemble, this maple pound cake is a wonderful, easy option that everyone will love.
Soft, Moist and Fluffy. You can serve this cake frosted or unfrosted, and it’s fantastic either way. You’ll love the soft, fluffy texture, and how moist the cake stays for days after baking.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
Cake
- Butter + Cream Cheese. The high fat content of the butter and cream cheese makes a rich, velvety, flavorful cake that you’ll just love.
- Sugar. A combination of granulated sugar and light brown sugar adds sweetness and moisture.
- Eggs. The eggs give the cake structure and strength, as well as moisture and a bit of leavening action.
- Vanilla + Maple Extract. Flavor.
- Flour. For an incredibly soft, light texture in your snickerdoodle bundt cake, I recommend using Swans Down Cake Flour. With its lower protein content, cake flour makes very soft, tender cakes.
- Salt. Balances the sweetness and enhances the flavors.
- Baking Powder. Leavening agent.
- Buttermilk. Use full fat or low fat buttermilk, whichever you can find. I usually don’t have buttermilk on hand, so I almost always make my own sour milk with whole milk and a little vinegar. You can use either white distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar.
Buttercream
- Butter + Cream Cheese + Shortening. Using a combination of butter, cream cheese and shortening makes a much more stable cream cheese frosting that will hold its shape, and not slip and slide off your cake.
- Powdered Sugar. Sweetens and thickens the buttercream.
- Meringue Powder. Adds stability and improves the texture.
- Salt. Balances the sweetness.
- Vanilla + Maple Extract. Flavor.
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 325 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Thoroughly grease a 12-cup bundt pan with nonstick baking spray (or use your favorite go to combination of butter/shortening and flour to grease and dust the pan, getting it in all the nooks and crannies.)
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed (#4-6 on a Kitchen Aid mixer) for 7 minutes. Scrape the bowl down several times while mixing.
- Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, beating in each egg on medium speed for 1 full minute before adding the next egg. Add the vanilla and maple extracts.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk, starting and ending with the flour. Increase speed to medium and beat for 15 seconds.
- Spread the batter into the prepared bundt pan. Bake for about 50-55 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the cake comes out clean.
- Set the pan on a cooling rack, and cool for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto the cooling rack and cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, cream cheese and shortening for 1 minute until smooth.
- With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar by spoonfuls, the meringue powder and salt, mixing until combined but clumpy. Add the vanilla and maple extract.
- Increase the speed to medium and beat for 4-5 minutes, scraping the bowl down occasionally, until light and fluffy.
- Frost the cooled cake with the buttercream.
Recipe Variations
10-Cup Bundt Pan
For a 10-cup bundt pan, scale the recipe down to 3/4.
6-Cup Bundt Pan
For a smaller 6 cup bundt pan, scale the recipe down to 1/2. You’ll have to experiment with shorter bake times for the smaller cake sizes, testing the cake for doneness.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common questions with cake making, so that you can be successful in your own baking! I also suggest reading these comprehensive posts on making Perfect American Buttercream, How to Stack, Fill, Crumb Coat and Frost Layer Cakes and How to Use Piping Bags.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I replace the maple extract with maple syrup?
Unfortunately, no, maple syrup cannot replace maple extract. Maple extract has a very strong, concentrated maple flavor, so that you only need a few teaspoons to flavor your cake. If you only used a teaspoon of pure maple syrup, the maple flavor would be undetectable. To make a maple cake with maple syrup, you’d need to replace a good portion of the sugar with pure maple syrup, which would require the entire recipe to be re-worked, since different types of sugars are also not interchangeable.
How should I store the leftover cake?
Store the leftover maple pound cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Can I use all purpose flour instead of cake flour?
You can use all-purpose flour instead of cake flour. Cake flour will make a lighter, fluffier, more tender cake, while all-purpose flour will make it a bit more dense.
You Might Also Like
Please check out my Amazon Shop for a curated collection of some of my favorite cake pans from trusted brands, baking tools, ingredients, pretty things and fashion finds. I recommend products that I buy and use every day!
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High Altitude Maple Pound Cake
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Bundt Pan (12 cup capacity) ("Original" bundt pan design)
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 4 oz full fat cream cheese (block style), softened to room temperature
- 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
- Âľ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 4-5 large eggs (Use 4 or 5 large eggs to equal 1 full cup of eggs, filled to the 8 ounce line in a liquid measuring cup.)
- 4 tsp vanilla extract (you can substitute half the extract with vanilla bean paste or scrape a vanilla bean for a richer vanilla flavor)
- 2 tsp maple extract
- 3 cups cake flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 â…“ cups buttermilk (or use 1 1/3 cups whole milk + 1 tsp white distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar)
Buttercream
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 4 oz full fat cream cheese (block style), softened to room temperature
- ÂĽ cup vegetable shortening
- 3 – 3 ÂĽ cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder, optional
- â…› tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 1 tsp maple extract
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 325 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Thoroughly grease a 12-cup bundt pan with nonstick baking spray (or use your favorite go to combination of butter/shortening and flour to grease and dust the pan, getting it in all the nooks and crannies.)
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed (#4-6 on a Kitchen Aid mixer) for 7 minutes. Scrape the bowl down several times while mixing.
- Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, beating in each egg on medium speed for 1 full minute before adding the next egg. Add the vanilla and maple extracts.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk, starting and ending with the flour. Increase speed to medium and beat for 15 seconds.
- Spread the batter into the prepared bundt pan. Bake for about 50-55 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the cake comes out clean.
- Set the pan on a cooling rack, and cool for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto the cooling rack and cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, cream cheese and shortening for 1 minute until smooth.
- With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar by spoonfuls, the meringue powder and salt, mixing until combined but clumpy. Add the vanilla and maple extract.
- Increase the speed to medium and beat for 4-5 minutes, scraping the bowl down occasionally, until light and fluffy.
- Frost the cooled cake with the buttercream.
What can I use instead of shortening?
You can replace it with the same amount of butter. Shortening just adds more stability to the cream cheese.
Whipped this up tonight because the family was craving cake! Once again- you do not disappoint. Was so tasty! I didn’t have a Bundt pan- so just made it into a layer cake. I freaking love your recipes. Have not had one go wrong yet!