Lemon cakes have always been my favorite. There is something special about sour food for me, I have always preferred it over everything else. Lemon cakes, pickles, HUGE quantities of vinegar on my salad – if it’s sour, I want it!
This lemon cake is quite light and the frosting makes up for most of the lemony taste, while the spongy part is mostly sweet with a light hint of lemon. I would personally prefer my cake a lot more lemony than this, but this one appeals generally to the wider public due to the mild lemon taste.
In any case, it is a simple, budget-friendly vegan cake to make when you are craving some sugar or to take to a dinner party for your friends.
Ingredients for Vegan Lemon Cake
What you need for the cake:
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 3/4 cup golden caster sugar
- 1 lemon, half juiced, whole zested
- 100 ml vegetable oil
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 170 ml water
For the frosting:
- 150 g icing sugar
- 1/2 lemon, juiced

Before you start:
- Mix your flour with 2 tsp of the baking powder to create self-raising flour.
- Juice your lemon and zest it
- You can choose many different kinds of tins to do this in. I did it in a regular loaf thin, same one I would use for vegan meatloaf.
How to make the vegan lemon cake:
- Start by heating up your oven to 200°C (392 °F). The cake is quite quick to make.
- Line whatever tin you have chosen to use with baking paper.
- Mix your flour (which you beforehand mixed with 2 tsp of baking powder), sugar, the rest of the baking powder (1 tsp) and the lemon zest in a bowl.
- Add the lemon juice, water, oil and mix.
- Pour the well-mixed cake into the tin and bake for around 30 minutes. You can check with toothpick eventually if you are not sure if it is ready.
- Take out and wait for the cake to cool off before eating.
The lemony icing:
- Mix 150 g icing sugar with the other half of a squeezed lemon until you reach the desired frosting consistency.
- Too much lemon juice and too little sugar will make it too runny to hold.
- If you want to make 2 layers, you can double the ingredients for the icing.
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