This Cherry Limeade Pound Cake is a fun and delicious cake for summer. There are plenty of fresh cherries in this buttery pound cake, and they pair wonderfully with the flavor of lime! Watch the video showing you how to make this Cherry Limeade Pound Cake, then scroll to the bottom of this post to print out the recipe so you can bake it at home!
My family usually spends a good chunk of the summer vacationing on the beach in Massachusetts. We relax and read books, we search for sea glass and swim in the ocean and we eat… we eat a lot.
We eat Maple Leaf hot dogs on New England-style hot dog rolls. We eat crinkle-cut salt and vinegar chips. We eat loads of lobster and chowder and fried clams. We eat soft serve ice cream with rainbow jimmies. We eat fresh corn salad and local blueberries. We eat watermelon and nectarines.
And most of all– we eat loads and loads of fresh cherries!
Cherry Limeade Pound Cake
One summer on our New England vacation, I took some of those fresh cherries, and I baked them into a Cherry Limeade Pound Cake.
It may sound glamorous and all… staying in a beach house for a couple of weeks. Trust me, it’s not as glamorous as you might imagine. It’s an extremely rustic place we stay in. No TV. No air conditioning. No internet! And no cherry pitter. I have a solution for that!
How do you pit cherries without a cherry pitter?
If you don’t have a cherry pitting tool, don’t worry because you don’t really need to spend the money to buy one. Use a straw to pit cherries! Just hold the cherry securely on a paper towel and pop the straw straight through the top. The pit will come right out! It’s a bit time consuming to pit cherries, but it’s completely worth it in the end for this cake.
I’m not a soda drinker at all… just the occasional orange soda or root beer. But on a hot summer vacation, I like to drink Cherry-flavored 7-Up. This is some good stuff, and it’s what I put in this Cherry Limeade Pound Cake.
The cake turns out to be a typical dense pound cake, flavored with plenty of lime and chopped fresh cherries, and then drizzled with more limey glaze.
The flavors in the Cherry Limeade Pound Cake remind me of Sonic Drive In’s Cherry-Limeade, that heavenly drink that I only discovered last summer on our family’s cross country road trip.
Here’s a heavenly slice of the pound cake. It’s tender and full of that lemon-lime flavor with a hint of cherry. And it is always quite the big beach-house hit.
If you’re looking for more cake recipes, you might also enjoy this Chocolate Sheet Cake or a Moist Vanilla Cake. Irish Cream Bundt Cake and Rainbow Swirl Cake are also delicious choices!
Cherry Limeade Pound Cake
Recipe Details
Ingredients
CAKE:
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 3 cups granulated white sugar
- 1½ teaspoons freshly grated lime zest
- 5 large eggs
- 3/4 cup Cherry 7-Up
- 2 cups pitted and quartered sweet fresh cherries
GLAZE:
- 1¼ cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 tablespoons Cherry 7-Up
- 1½½ teaspoons freshly grated lime zest
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt cake or tube pan.
PREPARE THE CAKE:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream together the butter and sugar. Add the lime zest. Beat in the eggs one at a time, until each is well incorporated. Mix in 1/3 of the flour mixture at a time, alternating with the 7-Up. Stir in the cherries.
- Scoop the batter into the prepared pan. Tap the pan on the counter several times to rid the batter of any air bubbles. Bake 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a sharp, thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Place the pan on a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes, then place a serving plate over the top and gently flip over. Give the bottom of the pan a few taps if you need to loosen the cake from the pan. Let the cake cool completely on the serving platter before topping with the glaze.
PREPARE THE GLAZE:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the glaze ingredients until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.
Video
Notes
- *If you only have regular 7-Up, Sprite, or even generic lemon-lime soda on hand, go ahead and use that- but add in a splash of maraschino cherry juice to make it a cherry flavored soda- and make sure it still comes out to 3/4 cup. For the glaze, use 1 tablespoons of soda + 1/2 tablespoon juice.
That cake looks like perfection! The straw trick…genius!
It sounds like you guys had a great trip with a lot of great food 🙂 The cake sounds great, love the lime zest in it! Wish I would have thought of your straw trick the other night, I’m in desperate need of a cherry pitter!
The recipe instructions say to “stir in the cherries”….but it looks like there’s a “tunnel” of them along the upper edge of the cake. How did you accomplish that? The cake looks wonderful and I plan to try it this weekend. Thanks for sharing!
Well, I actually just stirred in the cherries. The “sinking” happened naturally, and left a few stranded throughout the cake too 🙂
Cherry 7UP is one of hte few sodas I actually crave! The fact that you turned it into a pound cake is pretty rock star!
This sounds amazing!
Oh my gosh, this cake is absolutely gorgeous! Love cherry limeades from Sonic! 🙂
Sounds like a lovely vacation to me! Glad you enjoyed it and glad you made this pound cake, too! 🙂
Vacation begins tomorrow with plenty of stay at home time to make this cake. I just pitted 20 lbs of cherries last night. Can’t wait to try it. Any more fresh cherry recipes? I’m also canning and freezing them.
Great Tip. Here I am pushing the pits out with my fingers.
Eek! you need a cherry pitter. They work really well (better than straws!)
What a perfect summer cake! Cherry Limeade is one of my favorite drinks at Sonic… definitely something my family would enjoy!
oh my goodness this look SO delicious! Cherry 7UP is amazing and I like to get it on special occasions. heh
Ahhhhh…. you are making me even more homesick for an East Coast Summer!!!!!!!
Here in Arkansas we have Sonics around every corner…and I LOOOOVE the cherry limeade. This sounds fabulous!!
Cherry limeade is one of my favorites {especially from sonic} so I seriously need to give this recipe a try. LOVE!
OMG I HAVE TO TRY THIS…..when I was pregnant I drank a Sonic Cherry Limeade EVERYDAY it is my FAVE drink ever.
That’s too funny! If I had known about them when I was pregnant, I would have drank them too!
Love the straw trick for pitting the cherries! I don’t have a pitter and probably don’t make cherry recipes because of that. Can’t wait to try that trick out 🙂
Looks delicious and perfect for beach house in MA!
I love cherry limemades – this cake is genius!
I love everything about this cake!
Vacations are a lot about food for me as well. So many great things out there to try when somewhere other than where we live every day. I really like how you pitted the cherries! Genius :-).
Ah your post reminds me so much of growing up in Massachusetts. My brother and I always discuss how much better New England style hot dog rolls are than buns everywhere else (they open at the top, why do everyone else’s open at the side?) and I can’t help myself but call sprinkles “jimmies”, but no one ever knows what I’m talking about. I live for lobster and fried clams in the summer (but strips for me please, the bellies make my tummy hurt!). I sure wish I was home!
Great trip pitting cherries with a straw. And the results of that cake are beautiful.
Lori this looks FABULOUS!!
My grandma used to make cake with 7 up. I love the way you made this cake and I love cherries with a passion, too.
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow night!
what a stunning pound cake!! I love your method of pitting cherries with a straw.
I’m glad you could get away for a relax vacation for a few weeks! sounds fun!
Sounds like the perfect vacation! This cake look gorgeous, I love that layer of cherry on the top!