Sweet Potato Pound Cake for Thanksgiving!

Closeup of one cut side of the Sweet Potato Pound Cake resting on a white plate, crumbs are scattered. Shows a moist, somewhat dense texture of the cake.

Finding a New Recipe

Are you looking to make something a little different with your sweet potatoes this year? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sweet potato soufflé, and especially a sweet potato pie! But we came across a recipe on Facebook for sweet potato pound cake and thought we would give it a try. 

Except we couldn’t find the location where we saved it! 

So I went on a new hunt for a good recipe, grabbed some sweet potatoes that had been cured and puréed from the garden, and off to try a new recipe! 

This recipe comes from Taste of Home. I’ve found some great recipes on this site so if you’re looking for something new or want to try a different recipe for a common fruit, vegetable, meat, or pasta, this is a good place to check.

One third of a Sweet Potato Pound Cake resting on a white plate, crumbs are scattered.

Garden Sweet Potatoes

My sweet potato yield gave me several medium-sized potatoes for the pantry, and the smaller ones were enough for about 2¼ cups of purée. The purée went into the freezer while I figured out what to do with it.  

  • Full sweet potato harvest. Smaller tubers visible at the top, larger tubers visible at the bottom.
  • Smaller and longer sized sweet potato tubers placed in a rose colored glass pot to boil and mash for sweet potato puree.
  • Approximately two and a quarter cups of sweet potato puree in a Ziploc bag. Held by the author over the kitchen counter. Naval oranges in the background.
  • Larger sized sweet potato tubers cured and ready to save for storage.

I was tempted to cook the larger potatoes right away, but I decided to wait. It turned out better this way because then I didn’t have to run out and get sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner! I ended up setting those aside to make the soufflé. But when I decided to make the cake, I used my homegrown purée from the garden just to see how it would turn out. 

It. Was. Amazing. 

I thought it might be just okay because my sweet potatoes were a little starchy and stringy. My lack of faith is evidenced in the lack of cake pictures . . .

In my defense, I have tried a couple of other pound cake recipes lately and they honestly weren’t that great. I followed the directions to the letter on all of these, including the sweet potato pound cake recipe (except for a little extra sweet potato). 

Joy!

To my happy surprise, this was delicious! So delicious, that I sliced half of the cake and put it in the freezer since Thanksgiving was only a few weeks away.

There’s joy in the planting, joy in the harvest, and joy in the waiting. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3 that there is a time for everything and a purpose for every season. 

Joy in the planting is our hope for the future. 

Joy in the harvest is the realization of our goals.

  • Let’s keep moving forward to the fulfillment of what we’re working toward.
    A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul.” Proverbs 13:19a

Joy in the waiting is an expectation of a greater reward. 

In this case, we could have eaten the harvest right away, but I’m glad we waited. We get to share the results outside of just ourselves. My brothers are coming for Thanksgiving and I think they will like the cake (and the soufflé 🙂). This will bring even more joy! 

Recipe

A nice-looking glaze was included on the recipe page, which we didn’t try, but the cake was still absolutely delicious without it! 

If you didn’t or couldn’t catch the sweet potato pound cake recipe in the links, here it is: 

Sweet Potato Pound Cake

Ingredients

1 c butter, softened

2 c sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

3 c all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground nutmeg (I used extra cinnamon in place of the nutmeg)

2 c cold mashed sweet potatoes (I used the full 2 ¼ c purée)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 10” fluted tube pan. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 5-7 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg; add to creamed mixture alternately with sweet potatoes. Beat just until combined (batter will be thick). Transfer to prepared pan. 
  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely. 

If you tried this recipe please comment below and let us know how it turned out. Or let us know if you did anything different, or if you have any additional insights. I modified this recipe to make a Strawberry Pound Cake! I’ll make another post on that later. 

Enjoy – and Happy Thanksgiving! 

Life is worship, and worship is life. ❤️

2 thoughts on “Sweet Potato Pound Cake for Thanksgiving!

  1. This looks so yummy! I’d bet it would go great with cream cheese smeared on the top. I have a lot of butternut squash, left over from the summer and might try that instead.

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