Peach pound cake with cream cheese

This peach pound cake is loaded with juicy fresh peaches, and makes an easy summer dessert. Cream cheese in the batter adds richness and a subtle tang while keeping the cake tender, moist, and packed with peaches-and-cream flavor.

I’ve included substitutions, variations, and a few tips along the way. Keep reading for all the details, or use the jump to recipe button at the top of the post to go straight to the recipe.

You may also be interested in my blueberry pound cake and my lemon thyme pound cake recipes. For ease of browsing, you can find all of my cake recipes in one place.

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This was so good! Served it to my family and we inhaled it! Great recipe ❤️

-Laura

Peaches and Cream Pound Cake

This peach pound cake gets its rich texture from cream cheese in the batter and a splash of half-and-half, creating a loaf that’s incredibly moist without feeling heavy. It has the dense crumb you’d expect from a pound cake, but every slice stays tender and light, delivering bakery-style results every time.

This is the kind of cake you can make whenever the craving strikes. I used fresh peaches while they’re in season, but frozen peaches work just as well, making this an easy bake any time of year.

You can also swap out the peaches for other fruit, like berries. This strawberry pound cake was a such a hit, I made twice in one week.

Ingredients

• Flour – Regular all-purpose flour is the backbone of this cake.
• Baking powder – This is a leavener that helps the cake rise (check the expiration date!).
• Salt – All baked goods need salt.
• Butter – Choose unsalted butter so you can control the amount of salt in your recipes.
• Cream cheese – Cream cheese provides moisture, fat and flavor in our pound cake.
• Sugar – Just enough to sweeten the cake.
• Eggs – Eggs provide moisture and help to bind it all together.
• Vanilla – Vanilla extract gives baked goods wonderful flavor.
• Milk – Milk or half and half provides moisture to the batter.
• Peaches – Choose peaches that are perfectly ripe, if possible. Underripe fruit won’t have much flavor, and overripe fruit will be mushy.

How to peel peaches

Bring a pot of water to a hard simmer. It doesn’t need to be a full, rolling boil, but it does need to be a good simmer.

Make a small, shallow “x” on the bottom tip of the peach with a sharp paring knife. Carefully drop the peaches into the simmering water for about 20 – 30 seconds. Remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and immediately plunge them into an ice water bath.

Using your paring knife, loosen a bit of the skin and it should slip right off. One word of advice on this – do not peel your peaches too far in advance. Peaches, like apples, will oxidize. Meaning, they will turn brown after they have been cut or peeled.

How to make

Here’s a quick summary of how to make my peach loaf cake. Please see the recipe card at the bottom of this post for the full recipe. 

1. Prep – Preheat oven to 350°F / 180°C. Butter and flour your loaf pan, then set it aside. Next, sift your dry ingredients together.
2. Beat – Beat the butter and cream cheese together before adding the sugar and eggs. Finally, the milk, vanilla, and finally, flour mixture gets added to make the pound cake mixture.
3. Fill – Here is a trick to avoiding sinking fruit – I put about a third of the batter in the bottom of the pan first before adding the peaches.
4. Fold in the peaches, gently, then spread into prepared pan. If desired, add a thin line of cold butter down the middle to direct the split in the cake, then slide it into the oven.

Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before you unmold it. As it cools, you’ll see it pull away from the edges of the pan a bit. That is your cue to go ahead and take the cake out of the pan. Once you have removed your pound cake from the loaf pan, let it cool on a wire cooling rack. If you plan to glaze the cake, it must be completely cooled before glazing, otherwise the glaze will run right off the cake.

Peach Pound Cake Recipe FAQ’s

Common mistakes to avoid

• Overmixing – Be careful not to overmix the batter once the flour is added. Overmixing activates the gluten in the flour, which can lead to a tough cake instead of the soft, tender crumb you want.
• Too much flour – Measuring flour with cups can vary, I recommend using a scale for accuracy.
• Overbaking – Even a few extra minutes in the oven can dry out the cake, so keep an eye on it toward the end of the bake time.

Helpful tools and equipment

• I used a loaf pan with folded corners. It gives you sharp edges and looks very pretty. These are the pans often used in professional baking.
• Your easier to clean option, is a molded 8 x 5 loaf pan. It won’t give you crisp edges, but it is easier to clean because there are no creases where batter can get trapped.

Variations and substitutions

• Stone fruit – Swap out peaches for nectarines or plums.
• Add warm spices: A teaspoon of cinnamon or a combination of cinnamon and nutmeg pairs well with the peaches and gives the cake a cozy, late-summer flavor.
• Make a peach pecan pound cake: Fold in ½ cup chopped toasted pecans along with the peaches for a little crunch and a buttery, nutty flavor.

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Originally published 6/27/20, most recent update 6/4/26.