Take your pound cake game to the next level with Blueberry Swirl Pound Cake! Featuring a classic lemon pound cake base with swirls of blueberry sauce topped off with a dreamy blueberry glaze!

Spring has arrived here in Philadelphia – and with that comes the desire to bake all the springy things! (Springy things = lemons and blueberries, in my mind.)

But regardless of the weather, this easy blueberry swirl pound cake with a blueberry glaze is the perfect anytime treat. It is slightly sweet, tangy, and perfectly fruity.

One of the beauties of homemade pound cake is that it is super easy to make. Don’t let the three different steps – the cake, the blueberry swirl, and the glaze.- deter you. It’s still simple and comes together quickly! Follow along for ingredient notes and tips and tricks for the perfect blueberry swirl pound cake!

Ingredients and Substitutions

Blueberry Swirl

• Sugar & Lemon Juice: For the blueberry swirl, we are basically making blueberry jam. You will just cook some sugar, lemon juice, and blueberries together and add some cornstarch to thicken!
• Cornstarch: The blueberry swirl needs a bit of cornstarch to thicken it up! Mix the cornstarch with water in order to get rid of any clumps before adding it to the sugar and lemon juice!
• Blueberries: You can use fresh or frozen blueberries that have been thawed.

Pound Cake

• Butter: Room-temperature butter is needed for this cake (but not too warm – around 65°F is ideal). Unsalted butter is best to ensure you get just the right amount of salt in this recipe.
• Sugar: White granulated sugar – and while there are lots of places where you can cut down on the amount of sugar, I don’t recommend this cake as one of them. We need the full amount of sugar to beat into the butter to help create a little lift and aeration.
• Sour Cream: Sour cream is key to making a super tender pound cake. Plus, it adds a bit of tangy flavor! Full fat adds the best texture and flavor, but low-fat works as well. If you don’t have sour cream, full fat Greek yogurt is a great substitute.
• Eggs: Always use room-temperature eggs when making cakes! If you need to get them to room temperature quickly, set them in a bowl of warm (but not hot) water.
• Vanilla & Lemon Extract: Both vanilla and lemon extract add tons of flavor! Lemon extract is optional since the lemon zest and juice will add a good amount of lemon flavor. But the lemon extract adds a little extra boost!
• Lemon Zest & Lemon Juice: Fresh lemon juice always has the best flavor, and since you already have to zest the lemons… just use the fresh stuff, not bottled.
• Flour: Use all-purpose flour, preferably weighed on a scale or measured by fluffing the flour, spooning into a measuring cup, and smoothing the top. To make this cake gluten-free, a 1:1 gluten-free baking mix can be substituted.
• Baking Soda: Because this cake contains acidic ingredients, like sour cream and lemon juice, we need baking soda to help neutralize the excess acid.
• Salt: Don’t be afraid of adding salt to your desserts, it helps prevent too much gluten development and balances the flavors.

Blueberry Glaze

• Confectioners’ Sugar: Good old powdered sugar is the base for the sweet glaze that goes on top of the pound cake. This glaze is optional of course, but is such a treat!
• Blueberries: You can use fresh or frozen and thawed blueberries!
• Lemon Juice: Fresh lemon juice is best for the glaze and the rest of the components of this cake. The bottled stuff just won’t taste the same!

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Lemon Pound Cake

The base of this recipe is an absolutely delicious lemon pound cake. It uses a triple lemon formula: lemon extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice! The lemon extract is optional, but it does add an extra punch of lemon that the zest and juice just can’t replicate.

The lemon flavor combined with blueberry is slightly sweet and so refreshing! But if you don’t like lemon, don’t worry. You can omit the lemon flavors and replace them with orange juice and orange zest! Or, another great option would be vanilla bean paste for a vanilla blueberry pound cake.

When mixing the batter, be sure not to over-mix. Mixing too much once flour is added to the liquids can cause a dense and tough cake!

Kitchen Chemistry

Once flour comes into contact wet ingredients, it starts to develop gluten. The more batter is mixed, the more gluten develops, which results in gluten strands that cause the cake to become dense and chewy! This is great when making things like bread, since the gluten provides the structure to support the loaf. However, when it comes to cakes, cookies, and cupcakes, too much gluten development results in tough, dense baked goods.

Homemade Blueberry Sauce and Glaze

A homemade blueberry sauce can be used for so many things! In this case, we are going to use it to make delicious blueberry swirls in our lemon pound cake.

You can use either fresh or frozen blueberries for the sauce – no need to thaw before cooking (it may just take a few extra minutes to cook down compared to using fresh). If you’re using frozen blueberries for the glaze, however, be sure to thaw them first! Blot them gently with a towel after thawing to absorb some of the excess liquid, which will water down the glaze.

You can always switch out blueberries for another kind of berry like strawberry for a strawberry swirl lemon pound cake. Other berries that would be delicious are raspberries, blackberries, or even huckleberries if you can get your hands on some!

And of course, you can always substitute in a store-bought jam (of any flavor!) for the blueberry swirl – just use jam rather than jelly, since jam tends to be thicker.

Recommended Tools to Make for Blueberry Swirl Pound Cake

• 2 Quart Saucepan: A small, heavy-bottomed saucepan is ideal for cooking down the blueberries for the blueberry swirl.
• Loaf Pan: This recipe is written for an 8.5 x 4.5-inch loaf pan.
• Stand Mixer: An electric mixer is essential to properly cream together all the butter and sugar, which provides most of the lift for our pound cake.
• Small Food Processor: A small-capacity food processor is great for making the glaze. I love the food processor bowl that comes with the Ninja blender for this!

Tips & Tricks for the Best Blueberry Swirl Pound Cake

1. Use fresh lemon juice! This blueberry swirl pound cake turns out best if you use fresh lemon juice. Bottled lemon juice never tastes as bright and lemony as freshly squeezed lemon juice.
2. Don’t have a loaf pan? No problem! You can also bake this pound cake as perfectly portioned muffins! Spoon the batter into muffin tins, filled 3/4ths of the way full, and bake at 375 °F for approximately 25 minutes.
3. Switch up the berries for a fresh new flavor – the lemon pound cake batter also pairs great with strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries.
4. Store any leftover pound cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. You can store the cake in the refrigerator for a few additional days after this, although it will start to lose moisture more quickly once refrigerated.
5. This cake also freezes well! Freeze an unglazed loaf by wrapping in plastic wrap and store in a zip-top freezer bag for up to 3 months before thawing at room temperature. To freeze leftover slices with glaze, lay each slice on a cookie sheet, place the sheet in the freezer for an hour or two until the glaze is fully frozen, and then wrap in plastic wrap. Unwrap the glazed slices before thawing.

More Pound Cake Recipes:

• Glazed Lemon Pound Cake
• Chocolate Chip Cherry Pound Cake
• Triple Chocolate Pound Cake
• Chocolate Chip Pound Cake