Ranking 6 Store-Bought Pound Cakes from Worst to Best

Close your eyes and think of your favorite dessert. Is it a golden brown, extra chewy chocolate chip cookie or the perfect red velvet cake? While there are a lot of options for what it can be, I can probably guess what it’s not: a pound cake. 

A humble dessert, the classic pound cake got its name from its simple recipe: a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour, all tossed into a loaf pan and baked until golden. It’s one of the nostalgic cakes you probably forgot existed, seeing as there aren’t a lot of exciting or novel flavors milling about. But it is versatile; there’s a lot that you can do to pound cake to either influence its flavor, like adding booze and citrus zest, or repurpose it entirely, like by grilling and serving it with berry compote. It’s humble, it’s homey, and it’s nothing if not reliable. 

You don’t even have to try to make your own pound cake at home, as there are many options available to purchase at your local grocery store. I, a diligent and halfway-decent home baker, took a trip to a few local stores to purchase, taste, and rank several pound cake options. The cakes that ranked the highest have the proper density and tight crumb that pound cake is known for as well as a flavor that is balanced and not overwhelmingly cloying. 

Ah Walmart … what are we going to do with you? Well I know what we’re not going to do — list your butter pound cake any higher than last place. My standards for grocery-store pound cake weren’t that high — at least that’s what I thought going into this ranking. I was hoping for a nice, mildly flavored cake that was not too sweet, wet, or dry. The bar was set so low, yet Walmart’s pound cake still falls below it. 

There is nothing about this cake that makes it pound cake. Its light color suggests that it’s something more akin to angel food cake, while its smell and flavor are leaning more toward a cheap, store-bought vanilla cake mix. The dryness is pound cake-like, but its flavor is so overwhelmingly sweet that I couldn’t muster more than a single bite before I exclaimed, “Well this is awful,” and put it down. The color is also so white that I almost needed sunglasses to look at it, which is both off-putting and unsettling, simply based on the fact that cake shouldn’t be this hue.

I don’t think there are any ways to modify this cake to make it more palatable, seeing as how sugar is the dominant flavor profile. If this is my one-way ticket to pound cake town, I’ll get off at the next stop, thank you very much. 

This is one of the most expensive pound cakes that I tried on this list, and it felt like nothing short of a one-two punch to my wallet. I’m all for paying for high-quality baked goods at the grocery store, especially if it saves me the time and agony of baking it myself. But pound cake is easy to make, and this product was priced at more than $6 for a measly 10 slices. 

The cake itself looks unassuming. The 10 pieces are packaged in a clamshell container, though I noticed that the slices at the back of the container were about half the size of the ones in the front — meaning Stop & Shop gave me the butts of the loaf. So I was actually getting even less product than I thought I was. Gotta love shrinkflation. 

The structure of this pound cake is properly porous and light; it almost looks like a loaf of cheap white bread. The aroma is decidedly sweet, but I didn’t get much from this cake besides that. There is no gentle brush of vanilla, nor is there anything besides “mass-produced, factory-grade cake.” This sentiment rings true for the flavor of this pound cake as well. When I bit in, I got mega grocery-store cake vibes. It tastes about the same as a package of cheap vanilla cupcakes (sans plasticky frosting). Its dense crumb is the only thing that clued me into its pound cake-ness. While it might be good slathered in some macerated berries, it’s a pitiful attempt at pound cake and one that I wouldn’t recommend buying. 

Do we really need a chocolate version of a lackluster cake? Probably not, but Stop & Shop went ahead and did it anyway. I will say that the marbled pound cake decidedly veers away from the classic vanilla pound cake recipe, but I didn’t just rank this cake low because of its concept. You see, this cake has all the same issues as the original Stop & Shop pound cake. The pieces get incrementally smaller, the price is too high, and honestly, the cake itself doesn’t taste like anything. I could probably make a better pound cake than this one with my eyes closed. 

However, the chocolate version ultimately won out over the regular one because of its balance of the flavors. The normal pound cake is too sweet, whereas the marbled version introduces a slightly bitter and earthy cocoa powder flavor to the slice. This makes the sugariness a little more even-keeled and allowed me take a couple more bites of it.

Chocolate-flavored kitchen sponge still isn’t my vibe, though. Plus, you can tell that the chocolate Stop & Shop uses isn’t high quality. It lacks the rich complexity of a good cocoa powder and ultimately pushes this product down the list, especially compared to the tastier offerings from other brands. I wouldn’t recommend anyone spend money on this product, no matter how desperate you are for a sweet treat. 

If you need enough pound cake to feed an army, Sara Lee has you covered. This frozen pound cake log can be found with the other frozen baked pies and treats at your local grocery store. I’ll admit that this is one product that I have tried before for a ranking of store-bought frozen cakes. Spoiler alert: It didn’t fare well there, nor did it fare well here. 

The sentiments are the same, but I knew I had to try it again fresh for this ranking. Its instructions are simple: Keep it frozen until you need it; then thaw it out at room temperature for about 15 minutes before enjoying. Super easy, right? While the preparation for this pound cake is a walk in the park, its flavor is anything but. Because the product is frozen and thawed, it essentially sucked all of the moisture out, in turn making it taste like I was eating a stale sponge cake from the discount rack of my local Walmart. 

Dryness is common with pound cake, so I won’t say that this factor alone was the nail in the coffin for this frozen pound cake. However, I think the flavor, combined with this lackluster texture, is what ultimately did it in. I wanted something sweet, richly vanilla, and well-developed. While it is sweet, that was the only flavor that I got from this pound cake. However, it is a better value compared to the lower-ranked brands on this list, which earned it a spot in the middle. I supposed you could dress Sara Lee’s pound cake up with some strawberries, or throw it on the grill for some char marks. But a good pound cake is something you can eat out of hand, and this one just isn’t it, folks. 

My dad loved eating Drake’s products as a kid, including its chocolate-covered Ring Dings and Devil Dogs, but I never thought that I would end up with a box of Drake’s pound cakes in my home. But in all honesty, I’m not mad that I did. Each box comes with six individually-wrapped cakes, which are about the same size as a single slice of Stop & Shop’s pound cake. The benefit of individually-wrapped, commercial baked goods cannot be understated, seeing as how these items, particularly cakes, stale so quickly. The cakes are cute and sizable enough to be a decent dessert or, worst case, last-minute breakfast. 

These cakes are sweet; don’t get me wrong about that. They’re almost like a cross between a Twinkie and a cheap grocery store pack of cupcakes. The main reason why these cakes placed just a hair above the others on this list is because they’re buttery — and not in a stale, sitting-in-a-grocery-store-for-days rancid butter way. The butter actually elevates the flavor of the mini pound cakes and makes them taste richer, which ultimately helps their overall profile. Do I think they actually taste like pound cake per se? Not at all, but they are one of the most palatable options on this list. 

I will say this: I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy these mini pound cakes in the future, nor would I sacrifice my loyalty to Devil Dogs for them. But if these happened to appear in my parent’s kitchen on a day I was particularly hungry, I wouldn’t say no to them. 

I have eaten my fair share of Entenmann’s baked goods over the years. They were something that my family always kept stocked in the house as an after-dinner or breakfast treat, whether that was a box of danishes, cinnamon rolls, or apple pie. I never remember them being particularly good considering that I grew up in a family of bakers. But this All Butter Loaf Cake (read: pound cake masquerading as something fancier than it actually is) was probably the most memorable bite I’ve had from the brand — perhaps ever. 

The name doesn’t really clue you in to what’s inside. Since it doesn’t clearly call itself “pound cake,” I half-expected to be eating something more akin to birthday cake. But its flavor is surprisingly mild and yes, buttery. The consistency of the loaf is as dry as pound cake should be, so after a couple of bites, I deferred to the age-old “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck …,” thus affirming its pound cake-ness. 

There is some degree of artificiality here, almost like Entenmann’s was a little too heavy-handed with the butter extract. But this was really the only issue I saw with this loaf (sans the horrendous yellow wrapper). The sweetness is balanced enough to not overtake the bite, yet it’s decadent enough to be enjoyed for both breakfast or dinner. I genuinely enjoyed this cake, which is not something that can be said for the lower-ranked bakes on this list. 

I have baked (and eaten) quite a few pound cakes in my life, so I had pretty clear expectations as to what I was looking for from these store-bought pound cakes. The first thing on my wishlist was a dense texture and tight crumb. Pound cake isn’t as light and airy as other types of sponge, so I should be able to distinguish it from “normal cake” in this ranking. Flavor was also equally as important. The cake should be both buttery and sweet, yet not so overwhelmingly cloying that I could only muster a single bite. 

In order to get these cakes at peak freshness, I sampled them on the same day I bought them, at room temperature, and without any toppings or garnishes. While I can’t say I was pleased by all of the cakes that I sampled — and I will admit that I can make a far better pound cake myself — it’s nice knowing that there is at least one brand that offers a palatable and convenient option that I can grab on my next grocery run.