This lemon raspberry cake is the perfect sweet and tart dessert for the Spring and Summer!
We went off the deep end into cookie land for a while there…It was wonderful, magical, life changing if you will…but we are here with a cake today. We missed cake and we hope cake missed us too. Love you, cake.
We’re not sure where other baker’s get their inspiration from. For us, our inspiration comes randomly. Usually from a trip to the grocery store. We will see an ingredient of some kind that intrigues us and just buy it. Flashback to the $9 dragonfruit we bought for this Vanilla Lemon Curd Cake.
No plan. No ideas. Just a random ingredient. Then, from there, we figure out what the hell we want to do with this random ingredient we bought. In this case, that ingredient was lemons.
Lemons are not a staple on our pantry. Like, at all. If we ever do buy them they sit in the fridge until they die. So, us buying these in the first place is still a complete mystery. Alas, we also happened to buy raspberries because we apparently felt the need to buy more fruit we didn’t need, and so this cake was born. We love lemon and raspberry together. It’s a nice switch up from our typical super-rich, chocolatey desserts. Plus, we are also trying to manifest Spring in any way possible, so a Spring flavored cake was our offering to the nice weather fairies.
This cake has a moist lemon cake topped with raspberry buttercream.
We also tried to scale back slightly and just make 1 layer for this cake instead of 2 or 3. One layer is still a lot for 2 people, but it’s much more manageable than multiple layers. You could take this recipe and make 2 six inch layers if you desired.
This cake is honestly so stinkin’ good. If you like lemon flavor you will definitely enjoy this cake. The cake is soaked in a lemon syrup after it comes out of the oven which adds an even bigger lemon flavor. If you want a more subtle flavor you can certainly change the amount of lemon you put in. Sometimes here after the snow melts in the morning, we get a few hours of spring before the next snow fall…so these flavors just feel right.
Happy baking!
Here are some other cakes you might like!
Lemon Raspberry Cake
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp lemon zest
- 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice about 1.5 lemons
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 stick unsalted butter room temp
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 3/4 cups flour
Raspberry Puree
- 6 oz fresh raspberries
- 1/4 cup water
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
for the buttercream
- 2 sticks unsalted butter room temp
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp milk
- 2 tbsp raspberry puree
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and line a 9 inch cake pan with parchement paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in eggs 1 at a time and beat after each addition. Add the lemon zest and lemon juice. Then add in the yogurt.
- Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.
- Alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the milk into the batter mixture. Mix until combined.
- Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Let cool for 15 minutes before flipping onto a cooling rack
for the raspberry puree
- In a small saucepan, mix together all ingredients. Bring mixture to a boil. Cook until the raspberries break down and you are left with a smooth puree.
- Stir occasionally so it does not burn
- Strain the mixture through a sieve or cheese cloth to get out the seeds. Let the mixture cool.
For the buttercream
- Beat the butter until smooth and fluffy. Slowly add in the powdered sugar. Add in the milk and continue to mix. Beat until fluffy. Add in the raspberry puree. Save the puree remains to garnish the top of the cake.
Assembly
- Once the cake is cooled, frost the top of the cake with the raspberry buttercream. If desired, use the remaining puree and drizzle on top of the cake. Garnish with fruit if desired.