This vegan lemon cake is pure lemony perfection!
Jaye was saying it’s exactly like the lemon cake his grandmother used to make! Which is high praise considering his grandmother was quite the chef.
The recipe is based on our vegan vanilla cake, with lots of lemon flavor added in via lemon zest and lemon extract and of course, a delicious lemon buttercream frosting and lots of lemon zest as decoration.
It’s super easy, and will happily fulfil all your lemon cake dreams!
When looking around the web at lemon cakes though, I saw a lot of lemon loaf cakes. And I definitely want to make one of those too! But that isn’t what comes to my mind when I think of a lemon cake, to me a lemon cake is a lemon layer cake, and a lemon loaf cake or a lemon pound cake is the loaf cake. Anyway, just saying because I hope you didn’t come to this page hoping for a loaf cake! If you did, well, I’ll do one of those soon too don’t worry (I want to do ALL the cakes!).
I went with two 8 inch cake pans for this cake. Usually my preference has been for 7 inch cake pans, but I have broken out! I got some 8 inch cake pans and I am going to be making a bunch of cakes for 8 inch cake pans now!
And to spread the love, I plan on getting some 9 inch pans too and making some cakes for those too! But that’s still coming, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s focus on these gorgeous 8 inch cake pans right here.
And don’t these layers look fat and gorgeous? They rise just beautifully!
I didn’t use a flax egg in this cake, which I also don’t use in my vanilla cake recipe that I based this recipe on. I don’t find I need it in this recipe and I don’t want it to affect the color. In light colored cakes, a flax egg can affect the color leading it to look a bit spotty, so in this case it’s best to leave it out.
So there isn’t any specific egg replacer in this recipe, unless you count the baking soda/vinegar combination, which definitely acts together to create some crucial baking science that I won’t claim to understand but as you can see, it all just works!
That’s all I’ve ever done with my cakes, try things and see if they work, and they definitely do! At least the ones published here do, the failures don’t make it to the blog (of course).
So I really think you are going to love this vegan lemon cake! It is:
- 2-Layers
- So Lemony!
- Moist
- Spongey
- Topped with velvety lemon buttercream!
Keep it covered at room temperature where it will stay gorgeous for a few days or keep it covered in the fridge where it will last for up to a week.
So what do you think of this gorgeous vegan lemon cake? Let us know in the comments and please be so kind as to rate the recipe too! Thank you!
For more gorgeous vegan cakes, check out these great recipes:
And heaps more!
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Vegan Lemon Cake
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Prep Time: 20 mins - Cook Time: 30 mins
- Total Time: 50 minutes
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Yield: 10-12 -
Category: Dessert, Cakes, Baking -
Cuisine: Vegan
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
Ultra-lemony 2-layer vegan lemon cake with a velvety lemon buttercream frosting! This delicious vegan cake is perfectly moist and spongey and will make all your lemon cake dreams come true!
Ingredients
For the Vegan Lemon Cake:
- 2 and 1/2 cups (312g) + 2 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 1 and 1/2 cups (300g) White Sugar
- 1 and 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- 1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) Soy Milk (or other non-dairy milk)
- 1/2 cup (120ml) Olive Oil*
- 1 Tbsp White Vinegar (or Apple Cider Vinegar)
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 3 tsp Lemon Extract
- 2 Tbsp Lemon Zest*
For the Lemon Buttercream Frosting:
- 4 and 1/2 cups (540g) Powdered Sugar
- 1/2 cup (112g) Vegan Butter
- 3 and 1/2 Tbsp Lemon Juice
- 2 tsp Lemon Extract
For Decoration:
- Lemon Zest
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Spray two 8 inch cake pans with non-stick spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, baking soda and salt. Then add the soy milk, olive oil, vinegar, vanilla, lemon extract and lemon zest. Whisk with a hand whisk briefly until nicely combined and no big lumps remain. Don’t overmix, tiny lumps are okay.
- Divide the batter between the two cake pans and place into the oven to bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean.
- Remove the cakes from the pans and place onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Prepare your frosting by placing the powdered sugar, vegan butter, lemon juice and lemon extract into the bowl of an electric mixer. Start off at slow speed, gradually increasing speed until thick and smooth. If your frosting is too thin, add more powdered sugar, if it’s too thick, add a drop more lemon juice until you get the right consistency.
- Frost the cooled cakes and decorate with lemon zest.
Notes
*You can switch the olive oil for canola oil or other vegetable oil if you prefer, but I used extra virgin olive oil.
*2 Tbsp of lemon zest is from about 2 lemons, but it does depend on the size of the lemons, if it’s a large lemon you might get 2 Tbsp worth of zest from 1 lemon.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Slice (of 12)
- Calories: 512
- Sugar: 69.5g
- Sodium: 400mg
- Fat: 14.2g
- Saturated Fat: 2.2g
- Carbohydrates: 92.8g
- Fiber: 0.8g
- Protein: 3.8g
Absolutely perfect!
★★★★★
Hi there! Your timing is perfect. My partner’s birthday comes up in a couple weeks and she adores lemon cake. One thing, when we’ve eaten vegan baked goods from restaurants the buttercream tends to be way too sweet, is this buttercream very sweet? Do you think it would work to cut out a good bit of the powdered sugar? Thank you for your lovely recipes. I just found your blog today whilst looking for shortbread cookies. I’m excited to make your lovely recipes and will report back when I have. Cheers!
Hi Jules, the frosting is definitely sweet! The lemon juice does cut the sweetness a bit but it definitely is sweet. If you are looking for a less sweet version it might be an idea to use this cake recipe with a different frosting, maybe a vegan cream cheese frosting. All the best! 🙂
Thank you, Alison!
Hi,
Do you think i can use gluten free flour instead? Thanks
Hi Rima, I have not tested this cake as gluten-free so can’t advise.
Hi Rima,
My friend made this recipe with 1:1 gluten-free flour and it came out delicious!
Lemony yet sweet and delicious
★★★★★
YUM! Awesome cake! fresh, lemony and perfectly sweet! Great crumb and flavor! I’ve made this twice now. Once without changing anything, and another with added poppyseeds and a lemon glaze instead of frosting! Thanks for sharing!!
★★★★★
Fantastic Rosie! Thanks for posting and your review! 🙂
Brilliant!! I turned them into cupcakes and they were moist, spongy. And delicious. I even used the base and added strawberries instead of lemon and they were amazing. Thanks for this recipe!
★★★★★
That sounds fab! Thanks for posting! 🙂
Amazing. This turned out so good. I subbed real lemon juice instead of extract. The texture, flavour, everything was on point. Great job!
★★★★★
Woot! So glad to hear that Maria! Thanks so much! 🙂
Amazing!
For the icing, instead of just doing a lemon icing, I did the same recipe and added in a few spoonfuls of my favorite wildberry jam plus a little almond milk so the icing wasn’t so thick with the jam added. It was absolutely delicious!
I will be making this cake for my wedding next June! 🙂
Thank you so much for posting this recipe! 🙂
★★★★★
Hi Emily! That frosting idea sounds awesome! So glad you love the cake and I’m thrilled it will be your wedding cake too, and congratulations! Thanks so much for your lovely comment and review. 🙂
Hi, the flavour was lovely but mine rose about half as much so ended up quite dense, any ideas would be most welcome. Perhaps I overmixed!? I’ll try again .
★★★★
Hi Catherine, there can be a few reasons cakes don’t rise, over-mixing is one of them, baking soda that’s not fresh can be another one, it can be that your oven wasn’t hot enough when the cakes went in, or if the batter sat too long before baking. Did you use an electric mixer? If you mixed by hand and didn’t go totally wild then it’s less likely to be over-mixing. Glad the flavor was good though and hope it rises more the next time you try it! 🙂