This lemon layer cake recipe is adapted from the most popular cake recipe on our website: lemon blueberry cake. Lemon blueberry cake has consistently been in our top 10 recipes. It’s moist, sweet, buttery, and loaded with fresh lemon. Since its publish date, we’ve received many questions about leaving out the blueberries to make it plain. We decided a plain lemon cake needed its own separate blog post. Enveloped with lemon cream cheese buttercream and garnished with whipped cream, this towering beauty stands up to its blueberry studded sister!
Behind the Recipe
Besides the flavor and texture, this cake is loved is because of its ease. Very basic ingredients including a base of creamed butter + sugar, eggs, lemon, milk, and flour. We left out the brown sugar and replaced with more granulated sugar. No rhyme or reason here—just didn’t feel like reaching for both types of sugar this time. Between the cake and frosting, you’ll need 2-3 lemons. Both the juice and zest. Let’s chat about the flour for a second. The key to this recipe is using sifted all-purpose flour. Sifting the flour aerates it, creating an overall fluffier cake. Just like we found in our 6 inch citrus cake, cake flour is too light for this lemon cake; our cakes were squat and flimsy. All-purpose flour is great, sifted all-purpose flour is much better. Sift flour in a large bowl, then measure 3 cups. Whenever the word “sifted” comes before an ingredient, that means you sift before measuring. (Alternatively, if the word “sifted” comes after an ingredient, sift after measuring.) Here’s our set of sifters. Love them. We’re using the medium one in this photo. The lemon cake batter is velvety and thick. Divide between 3 9-inch or 8-inch round cake pans—roughly the same bake time for both sizes. For a 2 layer cake, divide batter evenly between two 9-inch cake pans. Bake time will be longer, but you can use a toothpick to test for doneness. This lemon cake batter will fit into a 9×13-inch pan. Bake time will be close to 40 minutes. And while we’re on the subject of different size cakes, this recipe yields at least 30 lemon cupcakes. For 1 dozen cupcakes, here is our lemon cupcakes recipe. They taste identical to the cake!
Lemon Cream Cheese Buttercream
We were torn between cream cheese frosting and lemon buttercream, so we combined the two by adding 8 ounces of cream cheese and a little extra confectioners’ sugar to lemon buttercream. The result is an infinitely CREAMY and BUTTERY lemon cream cheese frosting that we know you’ll love!!! Look at this stuff!!! Glides on effortlessly. The raspberry frosting from my lemon raspberry jam cupcakes would also be fantastic here.
Optional Garnishes!
Homemade whipped cream (I used Wilton 8B piping tip) Food-safe or edible flowers Lemon slices Fresh berries Fresh herbs Candied citrus
You could also add a filling between the layers: this raspberry cake filling would be delicious! The cake stand you see in my pictures is the brand Juliska. I can’t find it anywhere online anymore! Here is a similar one. Others I love:
Wood slice cake stand Stoneware white cake stand Marble cake stand (pictured with coconut carrot cake cupcakes and strawberry cake) Glenna cake stand Glass covered cake stand
If you love lemon cake, you’ll adore my lemon bars and lemon meringue pie!
