7-Up Pound Cake With Lemon Glaze

This old-fashioned 7-Up pound cake recipe with lemon glaze is a classic Southern dessert that uses 7-Up to make a buttery and moist from-scratch cake that has a hint of lemon flavor.

Pound cakes are such an integral part of Southern cooking. Made with simple ingredients like butter, flour, sugar, and eggs, they’re known for their crisp crust and velvety soft buttery interior that’s both dense and rich in texture and taste. Pound cakes are also traditionally baked in either a Bundt cake or tube pan.

So while this is a traditional pound cake recipe, it includes a secret ingredient… 7-Up lemon-lime soda. The carbonated soda acts as a leavening agent and replaces baking soda (yep, really). It helps make the cake rise and gives the cake a lemon-lime flavor. This 7-Up pound cake tastes like a classic lemon pound cake. Plus, we pair it with the perfectly complementary sweet lemon glaze.

So besides 7-Up, the other baking ingredients you need to make this pound cake include sugar, flour, butter, eggs, shortening, vanilla extract, and lemon extract. Fortunately, this is a very easy pound cake recipe. You’re just going to cream together the butter, shortening, and sugar, then slowly mix in the remaining ingredients. We pour the cake batter into a bundt pan and wait patiently for it to bake.

Then we have to be patient some more and invert the cake, before mixing together powdered sugar, milk, and lemon extract to make the lemon glaze. The final step is to pour this over the cooled cake and your 7Up pound cake is complete!

Keep scrolling for some serving suggestions and to learn exactly where the 7Up cake came from. I hope you enjoy this classic Southern treat. You’re bound to always find a bundt cake at any Southern gathering, whether it’s a baby shower, potluck, or family gathering. It’s just the Southern way, y’all!

Recipe Ingredients

• Flour
• Granulated sugar
• Shortening
• Unsalted butter or margarine
• 7-Up or similar lemon-lime soda
• Eggs
• Vanilla extract
• A bit of lemon flavoring

How to Make 7-Up Pound Cake

Place your sugar, shortening, and butter in a mixing bowl.

Mix that up until well blended.

Add your lemon extract or flavoring or whatever it is you found in your pantry or went out and bought.

Add in your vanilla…

And all of your eggs.

Mix that up really well.

Add in your flour…

And your 7-Up.

Mix all of that up.

Grease your bundt cake pan with cooking spray.

Then pour your cake batter into the greased bundt pan.

Bake at 325 for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

After it has baked, let it sit in the pan for 10 minutes, and then turn the cake out onto a wire rack to continue cooling.

Goodness, can you smell that?

The lemon glaze

Now we need to make our glaze.

Place your confectioner’s sugar in a bowl and add a wee bit of lemon flavoring. Then add a wee bit of milk.

Stir that up until it looks kind of like school glue. Don’t worry, it won’t taste like glue  😉.

If it is a bit thin, just add more confectioner’s sugar. I always end up making mine too thin to begin with and have to add more.

Pour the lemon glaze over the cooled cake.

It should look a little bit like this.

Now grab a slice and enjoy your 7Up cake!

Storage

• Store leftover cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days or in the fridge for up to 1 week.
• You can also freeze 7-Up pound cake for up to 3 months. I’d double-wrap individual slices or store them in an airtight container. I’d also freeze them without the glaze if possible.

Recipe Notes

• For best results, use room-temperature butter, shortening, and eggs.
• Another wait to guarantee the best results is to properly grease the cake pan with cooking spray or butter and flour. We definitely don’t want this cake to stick to the pan.
• Don’t overmix the cake batter once you add the flour to make sure your cake doesn’t turn out tough.
• Now, experts say that Sprite and 7-Up have different levels of carbonation, so you really only want to use 7-Up in this pound cake recipe to ensure it rises perfectly. But hey, you can use diet 7-Up if you really want to!
• If you don’t have lemon extract, I’ve got another suggestion for you to give that cake its lemon flavor! First, add 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon zest to the cake batter. Then add 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to the glaze.
• Speaking of the glaze, you can make a 7-Up glaze instead by combining 1 cup of powdered sugar with 2 tablespoons of 7-Up. 

Recipe FAQs

Where is 7-Up cake from?

7-Up cakes are a Southern recipe, as baking with soda became popular in the South in the 1950s when Southern women realized that carbonated beverages are an innovative leavening agent.

How long should you wait to flip a pound cake?

You should wait at least 10 minutes to flip your pound cake, but some recipes say to wait at least 30 minutes, so you do you. If you’re wondering why you wait, you want the cake to cool and firm up before you flip it to avoid it breaking apart.

Do I have to use a bundt cake pan?

You don’t HAVE to use a bundt pan, but I do recommend it. Otherwise, you can use a tube pan or 2 loaf pans.

Can I make my pound cake in advance?

I recommend making your pound cake up to 24 hours ahead of time. The cake gets moister the longer it sits.

How do you serve 7Up pound cake?

You can serve your pound cake as is or with some fresh fruit (I like fresh berries) and fresh whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream. However, you can also skip the glaze and simply serve your cake with a dusting of powdered sugar instead.

You may also like these pound cake recipes:

Apple Pound Cake

Aunt Sue’s Easy Pound Cake Recipe

Mini Bundt Cakes Using Aunt Sue’s Famous Pound Cake

Chocolate Pound Cake with Fudge Glaze

Buttermilk Lime Pound Cake

 

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble in the road.

~Henry Beecher

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