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Lemon Olive Oil Cake
Everyone needs a vibrant, light, fluffy, moist lemon cake recipe up their sleeves. Easter is coming up and it wouldn’t be complete for me without a beautiful, seasonal lemon cake. My Grandma Faye loved all things lemon so it was essential at our Easter Sunday dinner. Her recipe, albeit wonderful, uses a cake mix and I wanted to create one from scratch. You can’t beat homemade!
Back in the day when I was competing in recipe contests, I found a contest where the grand prize was a trip to Italy! It had been at the top of my bucket list for years. I went straight to the kitchen and went to work! It was for Bertolli olive oil and since I assumed most people would go the savory route, I went to dessert. I wanted to create an Italian Lemon Cake using olive oil, reminiscent of the Tuscany countryside.
The result was a melt-in-your-mouth lemon cake that was not only super tender, fluffy, and moist but had a heavenly fresh lemon flavor as well.
This Italian Lemon Olive Oil Cake is the perfect lemon cake.
The frosting can make or break a cake. So many of the frosting found on bakery cakes are overly sweet. This lemon vanilla cream cheese frosting uses butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and grated lemon zest.
This creamy, silky frosting is the most ideal accompaniment to this fabulous Italian Lemon Olive Oil Cake. A zester makes it much easier to remove only the best parts of the lemon.
This cake does call for olive oil and the wonderful thing is that you can use canola, vegetable, or coconut oil as well. I have made this cake many, many times and have used both canola oil and coconut oil with much success. You can even use coconut oil and top the cake with coconut flakes.
My favorite cake pan is this one from USA Pan Bakeware Round Cake Pan, 8 inch. My favorite tool to use to frost a cake is definitely this Wilton angled spatula.
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If you love cake, here are some of the most popular cake recipes:
- Love at First Sight Chocolate Cake
- Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting
- Orange Cake
- Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Lemon Olive Oil Cake
- Southern Caramel Cake with Salted Caramel Frosting
- Coconut Cake
- Vanilla White Texas Sheet Cake
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Italian Lemon Olive Oil Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
Italian Lemon Olive Oil Cake:
- 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Canola Oil
- 3 Eggs
- 1 1/3 cup Whole Milk
- 1 Tablespoon Fresh Lemon Juice
- 2 Tablespoons Fresh Lemon Zest
- 2 Cups Sugar
- 2 Cups Flour
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 teaspoon Salt
Filling:
- 1 cup Lemon Curd
Lemon Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 1/2 cup Butter softened
- 1 - 8 ounce package Cream Cheese softened
- 4 cups Powdered Sugar may need 1/4 cup more depending on consistency
- 1 Tablespoon Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1/2 teaspoon Lemon Zest plus more for garnish
- 1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla or Vanilla Beans optional
Garnish:
- Lemon Zest
- Blackberries
- Mint
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, add oil, eggs, whole milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cream for 2 minutes. In large bowl, add sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir into egg mixture and fold. Spray two 9-inch or three 8-inch cake pans with nonstick cooking spray. Place batter into baking pans. If using three 8-inch pans, bake for 20-26 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. If using two 9-inch pans, bake for 30-36 minutes. Cool.
To make frosting:
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and cream cheese for 4-5 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping sides of bowl often. Add powdered sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and lemon zest and cream together. Chill.
To assemble cake:
- Remove cakes from pan. Spread frosting on top of one cooled cake layer. Place other cooled cake layer on top and spread frosting all over. Garnish with lemon zest and fresh blackberries.
- Optional: Spread lemon curd on first cake layer and then top with frosting.
- Let chill for 20-30 minutes to let the frosting set up.
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of this Italian Lemon Olive Oil Cake. Find me on Instagram at @modern_honey.
This is my new favorite cake! It’s absolutely delicious.
I made this cake over the weekend and my family loved it, even my picky son. The cake was a refreshing change for us. I poked holes in the bottom layer and added lemon curd. Thank you for your amazing recipes.
Can’t wait to try this! Can I use a 9×13 pan?
I followed the recipe exactly except I made a blueberry compote instead of lemon curd to put between the layers. Very good! The crumb on the cake was a bit dense but very moist. Even my kids,5 and 7, loved it and they usually shy away from anything that doesn’t look like birthday cake. The frosting recipe is to die for: I could eat it with a spoon.
What a delightful cake. Made this for Mother’s Day. I used homemade lemon curd for the filling. I subbed cake flour for the AP flour and used one cup of organic cane sugar and one cup regular granulated sugar. It was amazing. I made everything a day in advance and it was fine. My only issue is I wish the frosting recipe made a little more frosting. It was so good! I’m glad I used the curd as filling otherwise I don’t think it would have been enough. I made two 9” cakes. So good. Thank you for a great recipe!
Made this for Mother’s Day and it was absolutely perfect. I didn’t use any icing for the filing, rather just a thick layer of homemade lemon curd – it was divine. I used 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar and found it plenty sweet! I definitely will make this again! Thanks so much for this!
I made this cake yesterday and had high hopes based on the reviews. The cake is so oily and tastes like oil because there is not enough lemon flavor that goes into it. I followed the recipe exactly and do not live in high humidity or altitude for the cake not to rise. The top is pretty gummy and the cake is very fragile. I’m glad other people have had success with it but I’m so disappointed.
I’ve made cupcakes from this recipe four times now. Always delicious. However, life in the times of coronavirus, I could not get flour from the grocery store, so my SHIPT shopper found a Duncan Hines white cake mix. Lo and behold it worked! I used a little less oil as I knew there was some oil solids in the mix. Anyway, we were able to have lemon-y Easter cupcakes.
I made this today with a small square pan & 6 cupcake tin. Came out PERFECT & lemony. Used a light vanilla glaze instead of heavier icing. Will definitely use this recipe again.
Thank you so much! I think this was the best lemon cake I’ve ever had! I got so many compliments! But mine wasn’t as yellow as yours! Did I miss something? How do you get yours so yellow?