Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cake
Updated April 16, 2025

- Total Time
- 1 hour 20 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- Butter, for greasing pan
- 1¾cup all-purpose flour, more for pan
- Zest of 2 lemons
- 1cup sugar
- ½cup buttermilk
- 3tablespoons plus 4 teaspoons lemon juice
- 3large eggs
- 1½teaspoons baking powder
- ¼teaspoon baking soda
- ¼teaspoon fine sea salt
- ⅔cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1tablespoon poppy seeds
- ½cup confectioners’ sugar
Preparation
- Step 1
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8-inch loaf pan.
- Step 2
In a bowl, combine lemon zest and sugar and rub with your fingers until it looks like wet sand. Whisk in buttermilk, 3 tablespoons lemon juice and eggs. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk dry ingredients into the batter, then whisk in oil and poppy seeds.
- Step 3
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean, about 1 hour. Let cool in pan until warm to the touch, then turn out onto a baking rack set over a rimmed baking sheet. Turn cake right side up.
- Step 4
Whisk together remaining 4 teaspoons lemon juice and the confectioners’ sugar. Use a pastry brush to spread glaze evenly over top and sides of cake. Cool completely before slicing.
Private Notes
Comments
Use Myer lemons, up the zest amnt
Add juice of 1/2 lemon to batter
Canola not olive
Change topping:
Boil 1/2 sugar with 1/4 c lemon juice
Poke holes, pour over after bake
Then bake a few xtra mins
Go heavy on poppy
Please... use grams and millilitres, or have a conversion function. Baking is about precision and cups are an archaic and inaccurate form og measurement.
You could also substitute sour cream, which I do often as I usually don't have buttermilk.
all olive oil tastes different! use a mild one if you don’t like the flavour. i like the herbaceous quality it adds to the lemon flavour :)
Too much batter for an 8” loaf pan. I used a 9” and the batter filled it nicely. Cooking time for the 9” was 48 minutes in my oven.
This is a fantastic recipe and I make it all the tome. I use butter instead of olive oil. The crazy thing is - the last time I made it, I forgot to put in the butter and it still tasted great! My neighbor tried it as well and she couldn’t believe how good it tasted without butter! You know it’s a good recipe if you can forget butter and it still tastes great and texture is still good!!
