Love the Loaf

• The narrow, deep shape of a loaf pan compacts the batter more tightly than a Bundt pan or square pan. Those pans have broader, shallower dimensions, along with rounded corners or fluted sides, that encourage the batter to spread out. This room to expand makes a pound cake airy, rather than dense. A loaf pan that's roughly 8 by 4 by 2 inches, on the other hand, is the traditional shape and produces heftier pound cakes.

Lose the Leavener

• Eggs provide all of the rising power you'll need for basic pound cake. Avoid recipes incorporating baking powder, given the ingredient's ability to lighten and aerate a cake. Likewise, pound cake versions that include buttermilk and baking soda, or lemon juice and baking soda, combinations are also designed to make the cake light. Avoid recipes using any of these leavening ingredients or ingredient combinations when you're striving for a heavier cake.

Bet on Butter

• If your diet can stand the occasional sinful detour, use butter at the rates called for in older recipes. Reduced-butter cakes are less moist, and therefore less compact. Canola oil and other heart-healthy fats can also alter the texture. Butter, which is the traditional fat used to create pound cake, provides the classic pound cake flavor and contributes to the heft. It's also important to work with room temperature butter, because cooler ingredients incorporate more oxygen.

Forget the Fluffing

• You'll need to combine your pound cake ingredients thoroughly, of course, but over-doing it can add too much air to the mix. In turn, this aeration will undermine the density you're trying to achieve. Specifically, creaming the butter and sugar together for a long time adds fluffiness to a cake. To avoid this unwelcome lightness, mix ingredients until they are incorporated, but not so fluffed up that you're introducing the air bubbles that are a dense cake's nemesis.

Slicken the Sides

• When you're after a high, light cake, flouring the cake pan's sides after oiling them will prevent the batter from falling back onto itself. If you want the opposite effect it's worth skipping the flouring step. Buttering the pan, or spraying it with cooking spray, prevents the batter from sticking to the tight corners of a loaf pan. The step also -- at least in a modest way -- encourages density because the batter doesn't have a rough surface to cling to rise higher.