Blood Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake
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, cocktails 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 Margarita Recipe
Blood Orange Ricotta Cookies Recipe
Blood Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins Recipe
Click Here for—> More Blood Orange Recipes
Visit complete list of–> Cocktail Recipes here.
This recipe was originally published in 2014 and re-published in 2019 with updated recipe notes.
Blood Orange Buttermilk Poundcake
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.
Truly enjoy an appreciate your work ! All the best !
This is delicious. Am making double the recipe today for a family dinner.
AWESOME! Made it this morning. It really doesn’t need the glaze. Will definitely make again. ?❤
I live in Florida and believe a blood orange tree would grow well in my yard as they are seasonal here. Can you recommend a nursery I could order a blood orange tree from?
We aren’t sure about nurseries in Florida. We live in Southern California. Hopefully someone else will chime in. Good luck!
Can there be a prettier looking cake…It’s Yummm and all the best for the new plant 🙂
Can I make this in a 9×5 inch pan?
You should be able to but we never have so I’m not 100% sure how it will come out.
I’m am madly in love with your images of the oranges. Stunning.
Usually most people kill plants by not watering enough, so at least you gave it lots of love and nourishment! You’re so lucky to be growing blood orange trees. I’d love to have one myself. Instead, I’ll have to settle for this cake 😉
YOu really have no idea how much I hate you right now.
This looks absolutely amazing! So sorry about your tree. I love blood oranges and all of your recipes are calling out to me.
I went ahead and tried this, this makes such a yummy filled cake and the amount was perfect. So good Gina, I love love love this site. I have made so many of these recipes.
Beautiful!! What type of blood orange tree did you plant? I’m am looking to plant one and would love a recommendation on the best variety. Thanks!
We put in another Moro blood orange. Same variety we always have planted because we love them so much. Good luck.
Aghh! Beautiful. And yum.
I bet this would be equally rockin’ with a sweet winter grapefruit.
You watered your tree? How do trees in the world grow without being watered? We had a ‘cooking apple’ tree in our back garden and we never watered it.
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 into cooking and baking and I’ve been baking orange and lemon cakes not that successfully I’m afraid
My orange chiffon sunk and my lemon burnt on the top. That sort of thing never ever ever happened to me in the past. Help! 🙁
So sorry about your tree, we are having trouble with our pink grapefruit tree this year. We have lived here 20 years and it has always been there for us and our neighbor this time of year. Beautiful recipe and pics.
I hope it’s okay to have pinned this cake. I’ll probably never make it, but I have spent much time just staring at it. it’s beautiful.