Lemon Blueberry Cake from Scratch
We're happy to report that our search for the PERFECT scratch Lemon Blueberry Cake is over!
The flavor combination of tangy lemon balanced with sweet blueberries is one of our favorites. You will love this soft, moist cake recipe.
Table of Contents
How to Make Lemon Blueberry Cake
You can find the full, printable lemon blueberry cake recipe further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8 inch round pans. I also like to line them with circles of parchment paper.
- In a medium sized bowl add these dry ingredients: cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.
- In another bowl or measuring cup combine the sour cream, lemon juice and lemon zest, vanilla extract and lemon extract and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, mix the softened unsalted butter until smooth. Next, slowly add the sugar and mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until fluffy.
- Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
- Add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (three additions of dry ingredients and two of wet). Mix until combined, do not mix above medium speed or overmix.
- Toss the blueberries in 1 Tablespoon flour and gently fold into the cake batter. The cake batter is very thick (as it is based in part on our white almond sour cream cake). Divide the batter between the 3 pans smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let the cakes cool on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes before turning out.
Assembling the Cake
We decided to boost the lemon and blueberry flavors in this lemon blueberry cake recipe with our luscious lemon cream cheese frosting in between the cake layers as well as a delicious blueberry buttercream!
We absolutely love cream cheese frostings. However, there are other options as well! Feel free to change things up as you like! A lemon curd or lemon buttercream filling would taste great too!
Piping a Dam
Since our lemon cream cheese filling is a bit soft, I piped a blueberry buttercream dam about ¼ inch inside of the edge of the cake before filling. This helps to keep the filling right where it belongs as the layers are assembled.
Blueberry Buttercream Frosting
In this frosting recipe, you'll see that the blueberry buttercream's key ingredient is a flavorful blueberry syrup, which is a simple reduction. We love this delicious recipe as well as its speckled appearance!
With this recipe, you will have plenty of extra frosting for decorative piping, borders, etc.
Decorating the Lemon Blueberry Cake
Decorate the cake however you like! Our blueberry buttercream is very easy to work with. After crumb coating the assembled cake in a thin layer of frosting, I used a star tip 21 to make patterns of overlapping rosettes and vertical lines. (For more details on working with a star tip, check out our star tip piping tutorial!)
Here is a peek inside. This cake is ultra moist with a tender crumb and wonderful flavor. Keep it in mind the next time you need a birthday cake recipe, holiday cake, potluck dessert, and more!
Recipe FAQs
More Lemon Cakes
We have so many lemon cakes and frostings for you to try! You can find a few of our favorites below, but check out our full collection of favorites here!: Best Lemon Cakes and Frostings Roundup.
Some of our most popular lemon cakes are our scratch Lemon Cake, Lemon Pound Cake, Strawberry Lemon Cake, and Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake.
Thanks so much for stopping by! We would love for you to check out our full collection of hundreds of cake recipes and free cake decorating tutorials!
You'll find everything from birthday cake ideas and elegant cakes, to baby shower cakes, cake recipes from scratch, cake mix recipes, and more.
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Lemon Blueberry Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened (226g) Shouldn't be overly soft, but soft enough to easily dent when pressed.
- 2 cups sugar (400g)
- 3 large room temperature eggs (if in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes)
- 1 cup sour cream (242g)
- ⅓ cup juice and zest of 2 lemons
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
- 1 Tablespoon lemon extract (10g)
- 3 cups cake flour (plain in the UK) — if you do not have cake flour see substitution below (342g)
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder (7g)
- ½ teaspoon baking soda (3g)
- ½ teaspoon salt (3g)
- 1 ½ cups wild blueberries tossed in 1 Tablespoon flour — Keep the berries frozen until just before stirring in. Wild blueberries are smaller and are less likely to sink in the cake batter. You can use fresh or frozen I usually use frozen.
For the Blueberry Syrup
- 1 cup blueberries (125g)
- 2 Tablespoons sugar (27g)
- ¼ cup water (57g)
For the Blueberry Buttercream Frosting
- 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened (354g)
- 7 ½ cups 863g powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla (8g)
- ½ to 1 teaspoon salt optional to cut sweetness
- ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons blueberry syrup- more if needed to reach your desired consistency
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Filling
- 1 sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened (113g)
- 8 oz Cream Cheese (Do not use reduced fat or cream cheese in the tub containers. Soften very slightly.)
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice (4g)
- ½ teaspoon lemon extract, optional (2g)
- Zest of One Lemon approximately 1.5 teaspoons 3g
- 3 to 3 ½ cups 345g - 374g powdered sugar, adding more if necessary
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease and flour three 8x2 inch round cake pans. Three layers will give you slightly shorter layers but more filling per slice.
- In a medium sized bowl add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.
- In another bowl or measuring cup add the sour cream, lemon juice and zest, vanilla and lemon extract. Blend with a fork and set aside
- In the bowl of your mixer, beat the softened butter until smooth. Gradually ad the sugar and beat on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until it is lightened in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
- Add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). Mix until combined and smooth, do not mix above medium speed or over mix.
- Toss the blueberries in 1 Tablespoon flour and gently fold into the cake batter. The cake batter is very thick. Divide the batter between the 3 pans smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let the cakes cool 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.
- Makes 7 cups cake batter
- (This recipe works well for cupcakes too)
For the Blueberry Syrup (Used in the Buttercream)
- To a saucepan add the above ingredients and cook over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase to medium heat and cook until the mixture is reduced a bit. Cool the syrup before using in the buttercream. It can be refrigerated 3 to 5 days in the refrigerator.
- INSTRUCTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY BUTTERCREAM
- Cream the softened butter until smooth. Blend in the vanilla.
- Gradually add the powdered sugar and blueberry syrup until the powdered sugar is incorporated . Mix on medium speed 4 to 6 minutes or until smooth. Slowing the mixer down to a low speed setting during the last minute of mixing helps to eliminate air pockets.
- Makes 6 cups frosting
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- Cut butter into ½ inch slices and add to the bowl of your mixer, beat until smooth.
- Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add to the butter, beating until blended.
- Add the lemon juice and lemon zest. ½ teaspoon lemon extract, (optional) for a stronger lemon flavor.
- Gradually add powdered sugar and beat until well blended.
- This frosting will pipe best if used while still chilled. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly and remix. Do not microwave to soften.
Assembly
- Place the first layer on your pedestal or cake base. Pipe a dam of blueberry buttercream about ¼ inch within the edge of your cake layer and fill with lemon cream cheese frosting.
- Add next layer and repeat.
- Frost the cake with blueberry buttercream. I like to apply a thin crumb coat layer first, and then follow either with a second layer of frosting, or with piping as I did in today's cake. I used a star tip 21 to create the piped designs. Due to the cream cheese frosting, this cake should be refrigerated until within a few hours of serving.
Looks and sounds delish! I do love Lemon & Blueberry :-)
Cake flour? What would we use in the UK?
Hi Alison, I'm sorry I forgot to add the substitution. I just added it to the end of the recipe. In the UK you can use plain flour in the substitution. For each cup of flour in the recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (it may be know as corn flour in the UK, not sure). This recipe has 3 cups of flour, measure out the all purpose or plain flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend.
Looks amazing! I'm going to get some blueberries as soon as possible to try this. I believe I will use a few drops of lemon oil in place of the extract (I am not very fond of lemon extract). Other than that, it looks perfect!
Review 1 of 2.
I have weddings, baptisms, anniversaries and such going on, that I am making cakes all the time lately. Therefore, little sleep. I just finished making this cake at 6:19 AM
Yesterday, I was asked to make a lemon blueberry cake. So, I had planned on using the America's Test Kitchen lemon cake, with a blue berry jam. I have used it in the past and liked it. So that means, I normally use a vanilla cake with a strong lemon simple syrup.
However, I recently made the chocolate cake from this site and it was absolutely fantastic. So, I decided to give this cake a try for 2 reasons. 1: the cake has 3 different kinds of lemon in it (it is really hard to make a lemon cake taste like lemon), 2: The frosting used a blue berry reduction that I have never thought of...it simply intrigued me.
On to the actual review: I was unable to obtain frozen wild blue berries. So, I took fresh berries, washed and got all of the stems off and froze them overnight in a flat strainer. I picked out the smaller ones and used them.
When making the cake, I have to admit, I didn't like the addition of the lemon extract. It smells bad to me. So, I thought it had ruined the cake, but I wanted to try to it exactly as written since it includes zest and juice.
Once the batter was prepared, I was surprised that it wasn't as thick as I expected. BUT once I added the frozen blue berries, it thickened up significantly. Be sure to have a small offset spatula available or a bent spoon so you can smooth it out. There is no way you will be able to tap it down to make it flat. It reminded me of cookie dough.
I was able to make 2 8 inch and a small tester for my daughter (4 inch). This kid loves everything blue berry (pancakes, muffins, cereal bars, yogurt). I needed her to be a tester because this will be for a client and I will not have any to sample. I was in the process of making another cake when she stumbled into the kitchen.
I told her I had made her a cake, she pulled it out and took a bite. I asked it if tasted like pancakes or muffins, she replied.."OMG, this is the best cake I have ever eaten., out of 10 it's an 11,000." I quickly asked for a bite and there was none.
I would add one note if anyone made this. Do not be concerned about the thickness of the batter. Instinctively, I assumed it would take a long time like a pound cake, but it didn't. It's the addition of the frozen berries that makes the batter so thick.
I have asked the recipient of the actual cake to take a picture and get reviews from 5 guests of different ages and I will add that to my 2/2 review in about a week or so.
Hi there, I can't find wild blueberries. Will regular frozen blueberries work? Thank you!
Hi Megan, Yes, you can use regular frozen blueberries. As I mentioned in the comments wild blueberries are smaller and less likely to sink. The cake batter is thick so hopefully that will keep your berries suspended. I hope you will enjoy the recipe.
can i add the blueberrys to the white alumd sour cream cake that is made using the box mix?
Hi Sarah, I have not tried the recipe using that recipe so I don't know if it thick enough. Please let us know the results if you decide to give it a try.
What could you replace the sour cream with to make this dairy free? I know how to make buttercream DF (crisco instead, not as buttery and savory but still good), and I would do a lemon filling of some kind besides the cream cheese filling but I’m unsure how to cut out the sour cream or what to substitute it with?
Hi Carrie, Yogurt (Greek is my first choice, plain is fine also) can be a replacement for sour cream in a recipe. I have not tried a dairy free yogurt but there are several on the market. I hope your grocery store carries one of these. Here is a link,
https://www.eatthis.com/dairy-free-yogurt/
If you do a google search, there is information on making your own but buying it would be the easiest thing to do. Good Luck
This is probably a silly question but when making the blueberry syrup, do you strain the blueberries to separate them from the syrup or do you incorporate the blueberries into the frosting? In other words, Does the 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp of blueberry syrup Mean just liquid or liquid and berries together?