This vegan layer cake is by far the lemoniest of all lemon cakes I've ever tried! Tangy lemon curd is sandwiched between two layers of tender cake that are flavored using the zest of 4 whole lemons!
The cream cheese frosting also uses homemade lemon curd, which packs in way more flavor than using lemons or lemon extract.
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Looking for more vegan lemon desserts? Try my recipes for vegan lemon muffins, lemon loaf cake, lemon cookies, lemon lasagna, lemon tart, and lemon cheesecake next!
📖 Recipe Overview
- Real Lemon Flavor - This cake boasts an incredible lemony flavor thanks to real lemon zest and juice, with no lemon extract in sight!
- Tender Consistency - It has a beautiful golden crumb that melts in your mouth. No one would ever be able to tell that it's completely eggless and dairy-free.
- Great For Special Occasions - This makes the ultimate showstopper cake for lemon lovers! Whether for celebrating Mother's Day, as a birthday cake, or lemon Easter cake!
🧾 Ingredients Needed
Here's what you need to make this easy vegan lemon cake along with the lemon cream cheese frosting:
Find the complete list of ingredients, quantities, and instructions in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Ingredient Notes
- Fresh Lemon Juice & Zest - Select unwaxed lemons and if possible, organic. Between the lemon curd filling, lemon frosting, and the cake you can expect to use the juice from around 8 medium to large lemons and the zest from around 6! This truly makes this the lemoniest lemon cake ever!
- Non-Dairy Milk - I always use soy as the protein content reacts best with acid to create a vegan buttermilk substitute. Normally I use apple cider vinegar as the acid but the lemon juice does the job here. Feel free to swap it for oat milk or almond milk if you prefer.
- Vegan Yogurt - This is in my opinion, what sets vegan cakes apart from the rest. It adds so much moisture to the batter and is by far my favorite egg replacer. Go for thick Greek-style yogurt such as Alpro. Thick coconut yogurt or vegan sour cream will also work.
- Vegan Butter - Like with my vanilla cake, I found non-dairy butter to be a better option than olive oil for this cake. The butter adds richness to the batter and gives a wonderful texture. You will need block-style butter, not margarine from a tub.
- Vegan Cream Cheese - I always use Violife as it's quite readily available in supermarkets in both Spain and Ireland. I've heard great things about Toffuti as well if you can get your hands on it!
- Homemade Vegan Lemon Curd - You'll need 6 ingredients to make the lemon curd (lemon juice and zest, non-dairy milk, cornstarch, sugar, and vegan butter) and an optional pinch of turmeric for color. As you can see, a lot of the ingredients overlap with the ingredients for the lemon cake itself so you won't need to overly increase your shopping list!
🥣 How To Make Vegan Lemon Cake
This is a relatively easy vegan lemon cake recipe, but I do encourage you to read through this entire post as well as the printable recipe card below before getting started to help familiarize yourself with the process. Here's a visual of how it's done:
Step 1: In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, rub the lemon zest into the granulated sugar using your fingertips until the mixture feels "wet".
Step 2: Cream the butter and lemon sugar using the spade attachment in your stand mixer, or with a hand mixer.
Step 3: Add the vanilla and vegan yogurt gradually whilst continuing to mix into the wet ingredients.
Step 4: Alternate between adding the vegan buttermilk (soy milk + lemon juice) and dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) to the batter. I recommend adding these in three parts, mixing to combine each time.
Step 5: Divide the cake batter between two 8-inch springform pans lined with parchment paper. For accuracy, use an ice cream scoop or scales to measure. Bake and cool the cakes.
Step 6: Make the lemon cream cheese frosting by whipping the softened butter and cream cheese until light, and then slowly incorporating the lemon curd.
Step 7: Add the cooled cake to a turntable and scoop around a third of the frosting on top.
Step 8: Smooth out the frosting with an offset spatula and pipe a border around the outer edge to hold in the filling.
Step 9: Pour the lemon curd on top, then top with the second cake layer.
Step 10: Frost the top and down the sides of the cake, using a cake scraper to smooth it out.
🍋 Variations
If you fancy switching up the flavors or fillings for this cake, here are some ideas to get you started:
- Lemon Meringue Cake - Frost with my dairy-free Italian meringue or Swiss meringue buttercream and/or decorate with mini vegan meringues!
- Lemon Sheet Cake - If you don't have round cake pans, try my lemon drizzle cake instead.
- Lemon Raspberry Cake - Frost with raspberry buttercream for a beautiful pink hue and bright berry flavor to contrast the citrus.
- Decorations - Top with fresh berries, edible flowers, mint leaves, or piped frosting. You could also pipe some lemons by hand by coloring part of the frosting with turmeric or vegan food coloring.
- Switch The Filling - For a fruit twist try raspberry curd, or blueberry curd.
- Skip the Curd - If you don't want to make the lemon curd frosting and filling, try my vegan lemon frosting instead which is based on custard and has a slightly milder lemon flavor.
💡Recipe Tips
Selecting the right lemons. While you can use any variety of lemon you have (Eureka, Lisbon, Meyer, Verna, Fino, etc) the most important thing to note is you want unwaxed lemons or if possible organic. If you can't get organic, make sure you wash the lemons well to remove any pesticides or residue before zesting.
Roll, zest, then juice. Firmly rolling your lemon on the countertop for 10-15 seconds will help to release all the juice inside. When zesting, remove only the top, bright yellow layer — the white pith is quite bitter.
Rub the zest into the sugar. Spend a couple of minutes running the lemon zest into the sugar using your fingers. The rough sugar granules will help the zest to release its oils leaving you with fragrant lemon sugar.
Measure with a digital kitchen scale. I have also included a conversion of US cup measurements for your convenience, but grams are always the best way to guarantee accuracy as even the slightest deviation from wet to dry ingredients can affect the recipe.
Use room temperature ingredients. This is key for both the cake and frosting. This helps the ingredients to emulsify more easily and encourages the batter to trap more air which results in a lighter baked good.
💬 FAQs
This eggless lemon cake is best served at room temperature to ensure it keeps its fluffy consistency.
If you don't plan on eating it all in a day or so, seal it in an airtight container and refrigerate it for up to 5 days. Then remove the cake from the fridge about 1-2 hours before serving to bring it back to room temperature.
I also recommend removing any mint of lemon garnishes until right before serving.
Yes, you can! Again, remove any lemon slices of mint leaf garnishes before freezing. You can freeze the cake whole or in pre-sliced portions. Simply wrap the cake in plastic wrap or place it in a sealed container and place it in the freezer.
To defrost, thaw it in the fridge overnight.
To check if the cake is done, insert either a skewer or toothpick into the center. It should come out almost clean with a few loose crumbs on it, but no batter.
If there is wet batter on the toothpick, return the cake to the oven to continue baking for another 5 minutes before checking again.
🎂 More Vegan Cakes
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📖 Recipe
Description
Equipment
Ingredients
Cake
- 360 g (3 cups) all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 240 ml (1 cup) soy milk, *see note 1
- 80 ml (⅓ cup) lemon juice, freshly squeezed *see note 2
- 300 g (1 ½ cup) granulated sugar
- 4 tablespoons lemon zest, *see note 2
- 115 g (4 oz) vegan butter, softened *see note 3
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 180 g (¾ cup) vegan Greek-style yogurt, or vegan sour cream
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- ½ batch vegan lemon curd, room temperature *see note 4
- 200 g (7 oz) vegan butter, softened *see note 1
- 200 g (7 oz) vegan cream cheese, room temperature *see note 5
- 60 g (½ cup) powdered sugar
Instructions
Lemon Cake
- Please read through the ingredients and instructions thoroughly before getting started. The frosting uses homemade lemon curd, this can either be made in advance or while the cakes are baking and cooling.
- Prepare: Preheat your oven to fan-forced 160°C/320°F or conventional 180°C/356°F.Line the base of two 8" cake tins with a circle of parchment paper and liberally grease the sides with oil or vegan butter.
- Combine dry ingredients: Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
- Make vegan buttermilk: In a jug, mix the soy milk and lemon juice. Set aside.
- Flavor the sugar: Add the sugar and lemon zest to the bowl of your stand mixer or a large mixing bowl if you're using a handheld electric whisk. Use your fingertips to rub the zest into the sugar until the sugar crystals feel "wet".
- Cream the butter and sugar: Add the softened butter to the bowl and beat using an electric whisk or the paddle attachment of your stand mixer for a minute or two until combined.
- Add the vanilla and yogurt to the butter in 2-3 parts whilst mixing until incorporated. Don't worry if the mixture appears a little split at this stage.
- Make the batter: Add around ⅓ of the dry ingredients and ⅓ of the vegan buttermilk to the batter and mix. Repeat this for the rest of the dry ingredients and buttermilk in 2 more increments until all of the ingredients are mixed into the batter. Stop as soon as there are no visible pockets of flour - don't be tempted to overmix!
- Bake: Transfer the cake batter to the lined cake pans and bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes. To check they are done, insert a skewer or toothpick into the center, it should come out almost clean with a few crumbs.
- Cool the cakes: Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for 10 minutes and then carefully turn them out onto a cooling rack to cool further. Carefully peel away the parchment that will stick to the base of the cakes.
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- Prep the lemon curd: If you haven't yet, make the lemon curd and let it cool to room temperature before use. If you have prepped it in advance, take it out of the fridge at least an hour beforehand and whisk it until smooth.
- Whisk the ingredients: Using the whisk attachment of your stand mixer or a hand-held whisk beat the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy.
- Slowly start adding 200g of the lemon curd (around ⅔ of the half batch) to the bowl and whisk until incorporated. The remaining lemon curd will be used for the filling.Lastly, slowly add the powdered sugar and whisk until combined.
Assembly
- Once the cakes are cooled, sit the first layer on a turntable.Add around ⅓ of the frosting on top of the first cake layer, and use an offset spatula/pallet knife to spread it in an even layer.
- Lemon Filling: Pipe a ring of frosting around the edge to create a dam for the lemon curd. Add the remaining lemon curd inside the dam and very carefully smooth it out using the spatula.
- Add the next layer of cake. Use the remaining frosting to coat around the top and down the sides of the cake. Carefully smooth everything out with a cake scraper. Garnish with fresh mint leaves, daisies, and lemon segments!
Notes
- Soy Milk: This gives the best result, but you can also use almond milk or oat milk.
- Lemon Zest & Juice: I used 4 medium unwaxed lemons. Zest the lemons first, then juice them.
- Vegan Butter: Take it out of the fridge around an hour before use and let it sit on your kitchen counter.
- Vegan Lemon Curd: A half batch is enough for the frosting and filling.
- Vegan Cream Cheese: Take it out of the fridge around an hour before use and let it sit on your kitchen counter.
Nutrition
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