German Pound Cake Recipe (Sandkuchen)

You know how you find something in the supermarket that you and your family love to eat over and over again? And suddenly you begin feeling bad for not cooking it by yourself so you know what’s in it and what you feed your kids? Well, that’s what happened to me! We love a packaged pound cake from a certain German supermarket chain and to be honest, I love that cake because it reminds of my childhood in Germany. After searching and trying, I managed to get the perfect german pound cake recipe.

My kids love it so much, I can’t make enough. And I wanted to share it with you! The cake is called Sandkuchen in german, which literally means sand cake, referring to the color and lightness of the cake, I assume. It is a simple, yet delicious pound cake recipe. It has only a few ingredients and the recipe instructions are easy to follow, but it needs patience!

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Ingredients for the German pound cake recipe

• 250 gr butter
• 200 gr granulated sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar (or other type of dry vanilla aroma)
• 5 eggs
• 130 gr of all purpose flour
• 130 gr of cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Confectioner sugar (optional, for serving)
• Whipped cream (optional, for serving)

How to make the Sandkuchen – German pound cake

Now, you have to keep in mind that you will need a lot of patience with this cake. It needs time for whipping all the ingredients thoroughly! With that being said here are the steps to make this German pound cake recipe (Sandkuchen)

First, cut the butter into pieces and melt it. I use the oven for that: I put the butter cubes into an oven-fit bowl, heat the oven to 80 degrees Celsius, and turn it off. Then I put the bowl into the oven and wait until the butter is melted, stirring a couple of times along the way. When it finally melts, you take the bowl out of the oven and let it cool down until the butter gets firm again. As soon as that happens, you can proceed to the next step. You can see all three stages I described in the photos below.

Transfer the butter into the bowl of your mixer and start whipping it. It needs a medium speed.

While you are whipping the butter, prepare the sugar mixture. Do to that, just mix together the sugar, vanilla sugar and salt.

Also, prepare the flour mixture. Just mix together the all-purpose flour, the cornstarch, and the baking powder.

Lastly, prepare your cake form. I use a rectangular 30 cm long, normal baking cake form, which I spray with some oil and also line with baking paper. You can go the traditional way, too, by buttering and flouring the cake. I had some disappointments with this method with other cakes, so I went the safer way.

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius (upper & lower elements, no fan).

Adding the sugar

When the butter turns finally, after maybe 5-10 or more minutes, into a soft, almost white cream, as you can see in the next picture, it’s ready for the next step.

Add the sugar mixture slowly, little by little, into the whipped butter while continuing whipping. It takes a little time, again, patience is the word!

Time for the eggs

Now it’s time for the eggs. They have to be added one by one, allowing each one to be thoroughly whipped into the butter/sugar mixture. This takes at least 30 seconds for each egg!

Final steps

After the last egg is mixed in, it’s the flour mixture’s turn. Again, very slowly, add the flour mixture into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture while continuing whipping at slow to medium speed. This, you guessed it, takes a little more time… patience!!! You might need to scrape down the bowl to manage to incorporate all of the flour.

Pour the light, fluffy cake mixture into the prepared cake form and put it into the oven.

It will need one hour, maybe 5-10 minutes more, to bake. You can use the toothpick method to check if the cake is ready, after 1 hour of baking.

Take the cake out of the oven, let it cool down for 10 minutes and then remove it from the baking form. Put it on a rack and let it cool down completely.

How to serve the german pound cake

When it cools down, put it on a plate and dust it with some confectioner sugar and it is ready to serve in slices!!! As a bonus, this cake will make your home smell amazing!

This cake is perfect along with a dollop of whipped cream or some vanilla ice cream!!! Yum!!

Try it out and let us know how it turned out! You can also check out our favorite treat recipe, Strawberry Oreo Pops!!!