Vegan Lemon Cake – Spongey 2-Layer Dream Cake!

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:

1. Vegan Chocolate Cake
2. Vegan Coffee Cake
3. Vegan Red Velvet Cake
4. Vegan Pumpkin Cake

And heaps more!

While you’re here, why not sign up to our email list, you’ll get an awesome free recipe ebook, and you’ll stay updated with all our latest recipe posts too! Woot!

Vegan Lemon Cake

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★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Loving It Vegan
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 30 mins
• Total Time: 50 minutes
• Yield: 10-12
• Category: Dessert, Cakes, Baking
• Cuisine: Vegan

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Description

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!

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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

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Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
2. Spray two 8 inch cake pans with non-stick spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Remove the cakes from the pans and place onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
6. 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.
7. 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