I have been meaning to make a lemon cake for quite some time. Instead of trying to find a new recipe, I decided to take the yellow cake recipe I always use and tweak it a little. It came out moist and has a very subtle lemon flavor. Yum! I also love the combination of lemon and raspberry so I decided to add some raspberry preserves to the center.
What I love most about this recipe is that it is a one bowl recipe. You just can’t beat delicious and one bowl!
Cake Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1 – 2 tbsp. lemon rind
3 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two round cake pans. After greasing and flouring the pans I also put parchment paper on the bottoms of the pans, and greased and floured a second time.
Squeeze and grate the lemons for the juice and rind. One tablespoon of rind give it a subtle lemon taste, if you prefer very lemony you may want to use 2 tablespoons.
Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Using an electric mixer or stand mixer, beat on low speed for 30 seconds scraping the bowl constantly. Increase the speed to high and continue mixing for 3 minutes while scraping the bowl occasionally.
Pour into prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. The pans I used took longer than regular 9″ round pans.
Cool in pans, then transfer to a wire rack.
Lemon Buttercream Frosting:
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
2 tbsp. lemon juice
3 tbsp. milk
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
Beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth.
Beat in lemon juice. Add confectioner’s sugar.
When adding the milk I started by beating in 2 tbsp. to see the consistency. I added 1 more tbsp. and it was perfect.
Continue beating on high for 2-3 minutes
Now it’s time to frost the cake!
As I mentioned previously, I put a layer of raspberry preserves between the two layers but you can also just put frosting.
Delicious!