Ty’s Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake

Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake —a delicious butter pound cake made with fresh sweet potato, aromatic spices, and sour cream topped with a luscious Maple Pecan Praline Sauce.

This Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake is a basic pound cake recipe with added freshly mashed sweet potato and an aromatic spice blend that tastes like the first breeze of autumn. The moist and tender sour cream enriched crumb is rich and buttery with beautiful flecks of sweet potato throughout. And the optional, but highly recommended, Maple Pecan Praline Sauce is just amazing. It adds an extra layer of sublime decadence.

What you need to make Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake

All-purpose flour
Salted butter
Fresh sweet potato
Sugar
Light brown sugar
Sour cream
Eggs
Vanilla
Baking powder
Baking soda
Cinnamon
Ginger
Nutmeg
Salt

Use fresh sweet potatoes

Freshly mashed sweet potatoes are important to this recipe for two reasons. First, freshly mashed sweet potato retains some solid form adding lovely tasty fleck of sweet potato throughout the cake. You want to see bits of potato throughout. Secondly, puréed sweet potato from a can will add extra moisture to the cake making it dense and gummy once baked. To avoid a spoiled cake, cook fresh sweet potatoes with dry heat* before peeling and mashing.

Important note: The potatoes should be steamed, baked, or microwaved. Typically, I cook sweet potatoes using the potato setting on my microwave but you can bake them if you prefer. Don’t boil the potatoes. Boiling them will lose much of the taste and starch needed to hold the potato together. Essentially, you will end up with a purée instead of a mash.

Tips for making pound cakes

• Start with room temperature ingredients. This helps to avoid stiffening the butter once it’s been creamed. It keeps everything loose for even baking.
• Measure flour properly. Too much flour will cakes dry. Too little and the cake will collapse. Check out my How to Measure Flour Properly tutorial for guidance.
• Scrape the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl between ingredients. There is a lot of batter for pound cakes and most mixers will not get the bottom ingredients incorporated well. I like to do a few scrape downs, as I call them, between ingredients to make sure everything blends well.
• Butter your pan well. I find that a good amount of butter or butter and a light dusting of flour works well to release the cake from the pan. Be sure to coat the pan well. Alternatively, you can use a baking spray.
• Let the cake cool before removing it from the pan. About 10-15 minutes is sufficient time for the cake to cool before removing it from the pan. Allow it to finish cooling on a wire rack before serving or frosting. Letting the cake stay in the pan too long could create steam and cause the cake to stick.

How to Make Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake

Start by whisking together your dry ingredients. The dry ingredients do necessary need to be sifted but it wouldn’t hurt to do so.

Then using a mixer, cream the butter, sugars, and vanilla together. Follow with the eggs one at a time then the sweet potato mash.

Begin to add your dry mix starting with the flour, alternating with the sour cream and ending with the flour.

Pour the batter into a prepared 12-cup bundt cake pan and bake for 55-60 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven. Cool slightly before removing the cake from the pan to cool completely.

Maple Pecan Praline Sauce

This sauce is simple and just so good. It’s the perfect topping for cakes, ice cream, and just about any other dessert item you can imagine. It begins with toasting pecans in a seasoned cast-iron skillet over medium heat for 3-4 minutes stirring constantly.

Then, to a saucepan over low heat, bring to boil brown sugar, cream, butter, and maple syrup until bubbling. The sugar should be fully melted and the smooth glossy sauce should resemble a thin caramel. Turn off the flame and stir in the vanilla extract, pecans, and kosher salt. Let the praline sauce cool to thicken to pour over the entire cake or to serve individually.

Sweet potato sour cream pound cake Troubleshooting and FAQ

• Can you use pumpkin to replace the sweet potato? The number one question I’m asked about this cake. Short answer—yes. I did some research and learned that Libby’s canned pumpkin is the best choice for cake baking. Canned has less moisture and is more condensed than fresh pumpkin purée which is what you want for this cake.
• The cake collapsed! My best guess is that the flour was not measured properly. This recipe calls for 3 cups of properly measured flour which is equal to 360 grams and measured out to approximately 2 ⅞ cups. Without a kitchen scale for this amount can be tricky. I strongly suggest investing in a scale. But you could try measuring 2 ⅞ cups of flour by spooning and leveling 3 cups of flour and remove 2-3 tablespoons from the last cup.
• Overcooked and/or over-baked. Ovens vary. My oven bakes this cake at 350 for 55 minutes. If you have experienced burn edges drop the temperature between 325-335 degrees. You may need to at 10-15 minutes.

More wonderful dessert recipes

New York Cheesecake
Yellow Cake w/ Chocolate Buttercream
Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls

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*Updated on 10/1/2020 for improved content. It was first published on 11/3/2017.*

Ty’s Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake

Sweet Potato Sour Cream Pound Cake—a delicious butter pound cake made with fresh sweet potato, aromatic spices, and sour cream topped with a luscious Maple Pecan Praline Sauce.

4.6 from 20 votes

Print Pin Rate

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cake, dessert, pound cake, sweet potato

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 55 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings: 24 serving

Calories: 397kcal

Author: Ty

Ingredients

• 3 c all-purpose flour (360 grams) properly measured
• 1 ½ c salted butter
• 1 ½ c sweet potato cooked and mashed (about 2 large potatoes)
• 1 c sugar
• ¾ c light brown sugar packed
• 4 eggs
• 1 ½ c sour cream
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¾ tsp salt
• ½ tsp ginger
• ¼ tsp nutmeg

Maple Pecan Praline Sauce

• 1 ¼ c light brown sugar
• 1 c pecans chopped
• ½ c salted butter
• ½ c heavy cream
• ¼ c maple syrup
• 2 tsp vanilla
• ¼ tsp kosher salt

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, and soda, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon and set aside.
• Use a stand mixer to cream the butter, sugars, and vanilla together. Follow with the eggs one at a time then the sweet potato. Starting and ending with the dry mix, alternate adding sour cream and flour to the wet batter.
• Prepare a 12-cup bundt or pound cake pan with butter or spray. Carefully scoop the batter in to the pan and bake for 55 to 60 minutes. A toothpick will come out clean when it’s done. Cool well before attempting to remove from the pan.

Maple Pecan Praline Sauce

• To a saucepan over low flame, add brown sugar, cream, butter, and maple syrup. Allow the butter to melt and the sauce to come to bubbling stirring consistently, about 10-15 minutes. The sugar should be fully melted and the smooth sauce should resemble a smooth caramel.
• Turn off the flame and add the vanilla extract, pecans, and kosher salt. Allow the sauce to cool to near room temperature before serving. The sauce will thicken as it cools.

Video

Notes

Here are the original measurements of the pound cake if anyone prefers it. 

Ty's Sweet Potato Praline Sour Cream Pound Cake (Original measurements)

• 3 c all-purpose flour, unbleached (I did not use proper measure in this version of the recipe. I scooped directly from my containers  so it was probably closer to 3 ⅔ cups of flour)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp salt
• ¾ tsp ginger
• 2 c butter
• 1 ¼ c sugar
• ¾ c brown sugar, packed
• 6 eggs
• 1 ½ c sweet potato, cooked
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 14 oz sour cream

Pecan Crumb Topping (Original topping was a streusel.)

• 5 tbsp butter, cold 
• 1 c glazed pecans, chopped
• ⅓ c brown sugar, packed
• ⅓ c flour 
• Pinch of salt

Nutrition

Calories: 397kcal | Carbohydrates: 44g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 24g | Saturated Fat: 13g | Cholesterol: 82mg | Sodium: 319mg | Potassium: 173mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 29g | Iron: 1mg

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