This lemon cake fullfills every lemon lover's dream. The cake itself is buttery and soft and the cream cheese icing is super tangy and delicious!
My family loves all things lemon - lemonade, lemon biscuits, lemon ice cream and of course lemon cake. The lemonier, the better! So I decided to make a lemon cake with lemon icing for the double lemon punch! This cake I made here I actually made for the cake sale of our kindergarten - and yes, it was gone very quickly. At the same time, I also made a smaller cake for my family because I can't make a cake and they don't get to eat any of it!
The cake batter is similar to my lemon muffins recipe and it's really lovely and buttery. The lemon flavor in the cake isn't over the top lemon but just right. Combined with the very lemony icing on top, it's just the right amount of lemon flavor.
Cream cheese icing is my absolute favorite type of icing. It's got that lovely tang to it that cuts through the sweetness of the cake a bit. I generally tend to also not make my icing overly sweet - there's nothing worse in my eyes than an overly sweet icing. That means of course that mine isn't as super thick and stable as one that contains a lot of icing sugar. But it's super delicious and definitely sweet enough.
You wanna know my secret for an extra lemony icing without it getting too liquid? That can be a problem by adding lemon juice in larger amounts which would of course also make it very lemony. In the summer, when I made the cake for my son's 6th birthday I played around with lemon flavor and couldn't get that pungent hit that I was looking for. So I tried adding vitamin C powder and it worked! Super well in fact! You really don't need much, a little goes a long way since it's very concentrated. But it's a great hack!
Will you bake this cake soon? Or how about my Spiced Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting?
This lemon cake fullfills every lemon lover's dream. The cake itself is buttery and soft and the cream cheese icing is super tangy and delicious!
Pre-heat oven to 180°C (356°F). Line a baking form (size xxx ) with parchment paper.
Cream together butter and sugar.
In another bowl, mix together milk, yogurt, lemon essence and lemon juice. Add the mixture to the butter & sugar mixture and mix briefly. It might clump a little bit but don't worry about it.
In a separate bowl, mix together flour, cornstarch, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
Add dry to wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
Pour into the baking form and bake at 180°C (356°F) for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Let cake cool off properly until fully cold.
For the icing, add butter (at room temperature) to a bowl and cream for 1 to 2 minute until almost white in colour.
Sift the powdered sugar and add to the butter mixture. Cream for two more minutes.
Add cold Philadelphia cream cheese, lemon juice and vitamin C powder. Mix together well.
Divide the icing into three parts (the amount of each depends on how much you want each colour to be on the cake).
To get different tones of yellow and orange, add a few drops of food dye to the different amounts of icing. Start off by adding just a couple of drops and add a maximum of 1/2 tsp (that will be a very strong colour).
Then put the icing in the fridge for at least 15 minutes before piping it.
Fill the three different icings into three piping bags with different piping tips. I have a whole set that I like to choose from. Pipe the icing on the cake by starting off with one colour and then filling the gaps with the second and then the third colour. Enjoy!