Blood Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake Recipe with Blood Orange Glaze (2024)

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by Todd + Diane

Time to make our blood orange buttermilk pound cake! It’s always around this time of year that we begin swimming in citrus. Every meal (and drink!) has some splash of fragrant juice. You can call it a garden obsession, but we’re not far from being finished.

Blood Orange Pound Cake Recipe

Last week we planted another (our third) blood orange tree and it wasn’t in-celebration to grow more, but rather, to replace one blood orange tree that had completely died on us.So this blog post has mixed emotions, both sadness for losing a beloved tree and joy of giving another tree life in our garden. We’re ready to move on and celebrate blood oranges.

Call it over-zealous gardening or perhaps too much attention to care which resulted in overwatering. After ten years, our beloved first blood orange tree completely died. We were in shock and speechless when it started to deteriorate after only 4 weeks of peaking out with hundreds of blood oranges. With still about one hundred pounds of blood oranges to pick, the tree quickly started to yellow and lose it’s leaves.

Finding the Answers to Our Dying Tree

After many phone calls to nurseries, conversations with Master gardeners and hours researching online we found the answer. The conclusion was that our tree was being over watered.We killed our own tree? Did we really hurt it? After a phase of feeling guilt for nurturing the tree too much, we realized we shouldn’t be punishing ourselves for loving something too much. In fact, we saw it as a learning experience on how to care for older established trees and not baby-ing it like a toddler-tree.

We said good-bye to our first blood orange tree for all the years of beautiful juice, zest, co*cktails and love. We celebrated its contribution to our garden with this blood orange buttermilk pound cake. It’s delicious and beautiful, just like the tree that we loved so much.

We’re grateful for all the wonderful blood oranges that have graced our kitchen. Hope you’ll enjoy this Seasons bounty of blood oranges too.

-diane and todd

Here’s some of our previous blood orange recipes you might enjoy:

Blood Orange Bars with Brown Butter Crust Recipe

Blood Orange MargaritaRecipe

Blood Orange Pops Recipe

Blood Orange Ricotta Cookies Recipe

Blood Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins Recipe

Click Here for—>More Blood Orange Recipes

Visit complete list of–> co*cktail Recipes here.

This recipe was originally published in 2014 and re-published in 2019 with updated recipe notes.

Blood Orange Buttermilk Poundcake

Yield: 8 servings

Prep Time: 30 minutes mins

Cook Time: 1 hour hr

Total Time: 1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Adapted from Fine Cooking's Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake. Our pound cake is made with blood orange juice and zest but to really highlight the flavor of blood oranges we will serve this loaf with a quick and easy blood orange sauce either drizzled over top or alongside to dunk in.

Makes one8.5 inch x 4.5 inch loaf

4.89 from 18 votes

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Ingredients

1 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons (10ml) baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup (113g or one stick) butter , at room temperature
1 cup (200g) sugar
finely grated zest of 2 blood oranges
1/4 cup (60ml) fresh blood orange juice
1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup (120ml) buttermilk *see note below

For the sauce:

1-2 Tablespoons (15 -30ml) fresh blood orange juice (depending on how thick you like your sauce)
1/2 cup (60g) confectioners’ sugar

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 8.5 inch x 4.5 inch loaf pan.
Whisk or sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt for about 20 seconds or until well combined. Set aside.
Beat together the butter, sugar, blood orange zest and blood orange juice until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes in a stand mixer). Scrape the sides of the bowl and beat in the vanilla extract and egg.
Add the buttermilk and the dry flour mixture to the butter/egg batter. Carefully stir the batter until combined, but don’t overmix (it will be a thick batter), making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 45 minutes - 1 hour, or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.
When cool enough to handle, gently remove the pound cake from the pan.
Make the sauce: Whisk together the blood orange juice and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Spoon the sauce over the pound cake or serve alongside to dunk in.

Notes

Note 1: To quickly make a homemade buttermilk, combine 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or in the case of this recipe - 1/2 cup milk-1/2 tablespoon lemon juice).

Stir to combine and allow to sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes. Use as directed for buttermilk in the recipe.

Nutrition Information per Serving

Calories: 352kcal, Carbohydrates: 55g, Protein: 4g, Fat: 13g, Saturated Fat: 8g, Trans Fat: 1g, Cholesterol: 55mg, Sodium: 524mg, Potassium: 83mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 34g, Vitamin A: 433IU, Vitamin C: 5mg, Calcium: 89mg, Iron: 2mg

Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: Baking, Fruit, Garden Recipes, Oven

Calories: 352

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48 comments on “Blood Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake”

Danit Hetsroni — January 2, 2022 @ 3:44 pm Reply

We have such a crazy amount of blood oranges on our tree, so I looked up recipes and this is the first that popped up. WOW this is a delicious cake!! Perfectly moist and light, with an outstanding blood orange flavor. I just noticed all the other blood orange recipes you guys have – can’t wait to check them out! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
- Todd + Diane — January 3, 2022 @ 8:24 am Reply
  
  Thank you Danit for making it and enjoying it! That’s so cool that you have a healthy and bountiful blood orange tree.
Meredith C Hoppin — June 2, 2021 @ 7:26 pm Reply

I bought some blood oranges the other day just to do something with — you don’t see them in the market often. Then, much came up in life and I almost forgot about them, and this afternoon I realized I had to use them soon. Came upon your recipe. I had no buttermilk so did the lemon juice thing (with whole milk). Easy! Delicious! Just wonderful! Lovely flavor and not too sweet (in the way of blood oranges). I used a full two tbl. of juice for the topping. Next time I might make more topping (1 1/2?). And there will be a next time — more than one! A keeper.
Mushka — April 10, 2021 @ 9:31 am Reply

Hey! I want to make this recipe today but I don’t see anything about the blood orange circles on top? How do I do them? Just slice them and cook them down a bit in water? I definitely want to feature the wow factor with that.
- Todd + Diane — September 1, 2021 @ 9:53 am Reply
  
  Hi Mushka,
  Those are just thin slices of blood oranges and then the sauce was poured over the top. Nothing else was done.
  Happy cooking!
  Todd & Diane
Anne H. — February 15, 2020 @ 9:08 pm Reply

I made this today and it is a beautiful texture, so soft and fluffy. I’m afraid an extra 5 min in the oven made the walls a little tough, I will watch it more carefully next time. I didnt want ‘sauce’, so I added enough sugar to make a glaze to drizzle on top and drip down the sides and dry, so it was pink rather than red.
Emma — June 17, 2019 @ 2:56 pm Reply

The cake looks delicious, but I am so sorry to hear that you lost your blood orange tree! It would be amazing to have one. I hope that you have better luck growing the next one.
Sandra — June 7, 2019 @ 4:37 pm Reply

I’m a huge fan of blood oranges. It gets overlooked very often. I’m so glad you’ve introduced so many good recipes!
Jan — June 7, 2019 @ 4:36 pm Reply

Gorgeous looking cake! And it’s delicious too!
Dalia — May 30, 2019 @ 4:49 am Reply

Unbelievable, Oh yum! Love pound cake but never tried making them at home. i Will have to try this!
Mama Maggie's Kitchen — April 3, 2019 @ 11:35 pm Reply

It looks incredibly delicious. I wish this were in front of me.
sugarpawz — March 20, 2019 @ 9:36 am Reply

I can’t get lovely blood oranges. I presume ordinary oranges are fine? That’s what I’ve been doing lately trying to get back
- — March 24, 2019 @ 12:01 pm Reply
  
  Yes, regular oranges should be fine and probably a little sweeter too. Enjoy!