This moist Lemon Bundt Cake is soft, has a fine crumb, and wonderful flavor!
If you love lemon desserts like we do, don't miss this easy and delicious scratch recipe.
How to Make a Lemon Bundt Cake
You can find the full, printable recipe card for this cake at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour bundt pan.
- In a medium sized bowl, add cake flour, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest. Whisk for 30 seconds to blend and set aside.
- In another bowl or measuring cup, add the milk, vegetable oil, and lemon extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your electric mixer, add the softened butter, and mix until smooth. (If using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment). Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 3-5 minutes.
- Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition until the yolk is blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk mixture- beginning and ending with dry ingredients. We do three additions of dry ingredients, two additions of wet ingredients. Scrape down sides as needed. After last addition, mix just until blended.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- Allow the lemon bundt cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out. Before turning out of the pan, you can brush over the cake with a light coating of lemon simple syrup. This will give it an added boost of lemon.
Lemon Simple Syrup
For an additional boost of lemon flavor, we also prepared a lemon simple syrup. This is a combination of lemon juice and sugar. We heated ours in the microwave until the sugar crystals had dissolved. You can also heat in a saucepan if you prefer.
We used a silicone pastry brush to brush the syrup over the top of the cake (which will eventually become the bottom) while still in the pan.
After turning the cake out onto a cake plate or pedestal, brush the top and sides of the cake with a light coating of the syrup.
Lemon Glaze
We often top our pound cakes with a simple sugar glaze. Our lemony version of this is a combination of powdered sugar, lemon extract (or fresh lemon juice), and a pinch of salt.
You can adjust the consistency to your liking by either increasing the powdered sugar or the lemon juice.
Decorating the Bundt Cake
The glaze can be spooned over the cooled cake if you'd like, but for more control, you can pipe it on with a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away. (This is what we did.)
*This is a sweet glaze and while it will taste way too sweet if you eat it by the spoonful, a drizzle over the bundt cake is perfect. It looks so pretty too!
Top with a dusting of lemon zest.
More Lemon Cakes to Try!
In addition to Lemon Pound Cakes (like our Lemon Whipping Cream Pound Cake and Lemon Blueberry Sour Cream Pound Cake), we have so many more lemon desserts for you to try!
We'll link to a few favorites below, but don't miss our full listing here: The Best Lemon Cakes, Fillings, and Frostings!
Enjoy the Recipe!
Thanks so much for stopping by! If you give our Lemon Bundt Cake a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below.
Keep it in mind for birthdays, spring and summer gatherings, or just because! You can serve it just as it is, or with a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream.
Lemon Bundt Cake
This moist, soft, and flavorful Lemon Bundt Cake is sure to please the lemon lovers in your life! It has a fine crumb but is not as dense as a pound cake. Wonderful flavor and texture!
Ingredients
- 2 Sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour - See Notes for substitution
- 3 teaspoons (12g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt (omit if you are using salted butter)
- Zest of 2-3 Lemons
- 1 cup (242g) milk (We use whole milk)
- ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil- we use canola oil
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon (13g) Lemon Extract (We used McCormick) *See notes
Lemon Simple Syrup
- ⅓ cup (75g) Lemon Juice from two large lemons
- ½ cup (100g) sugar
Lemon Glaze
- 2 cups Confectioners Sugar (see notes)
- 2 Tablespoons (30g) milk, more if needed for consistency you like
- Pinch of salt (Approximately ¼ teaspoon)
- Lemon Extract- Start with 1 teaspoon and add additional until you reach desired amount of lemon flavor (You can substitute lemon juice for this also)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour bundt pan.
- In a medium sized bowl, add cake flour, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest. Whisk for 30 seconds to blend and set aside.
- In another bowl or measuring cup, add the milk, vegetable oil, and lemon extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the softened butter, and mix until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 3-5 minutes, until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition until the yolk has blended in.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk mixture- beginning and ending with dry ingredients. That will be three additions of dry ingredients, two additions of wet ingredients. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl as needed. After last addition, mix just until blended and smooth. Mix on low speed.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. It should spring back when lightly touched. At about 20 minutes check on the cake, if the top is becoming too dark, loosely lay a piece of aluminum foil over the top of the cake.
- Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
- This recipe makes 7 cups of batter
Lemon Simple Syrup
- Stir together the lemon juice and sugar.
- Microwave for one minute. The mixture should be hot enough to dissove the sugar. If you see sugar crystals on the spoon after stirring the heated mixture, microwave for a few more seconds. (You can heat and dissolve the mixture on the stovetop if you would rather).
- This syrup will be brushed on the top, bottom, and sides of the cake for an added boost of lemon flavor.
- When the cake is fresh out of the oven and still in the pan, brush the syrup over the top (which will eventually become the bottom) of the cake.
- After cake has been turned out, brush additional lemon simple syrup on the top and sides while the cake is still hot. Once that sinks in, brush more syrup over the cake. You can use all of the syrup if you like.
For the Lemon Glaze
- Combine confectioners sugar, milk, lemon extract (or fresh lemon juice), and a pinch of salt in a small bowl and stir until smooth.
- Drizzle over the cooled pound cake. (I spooned mine into a piping bag with the tip snipped away for more control.) If the glaze is too thin, add a bit more powdered sugar. If it is too thick, add a bit more juice or a touch of milk.
- Optional: Add lemon zest over the top of the finished cake if you'd like!
- This cake can be kept at room temperature in an airtight container.
Notes
Substitution for Cake Flour:
(Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour) For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend
Lemon Extract
Before using Lemon Extract in your cakes or frostings, etc. make sure that it doesn't have an "off" smell. Sometimes, lemon extract (as well as other extracts) can go bad- it will smell and taste rancid. Even if the date hasn't expired, check it anyway.)
Bundt Pan
As a general rule the cake batter should not fill the bundt can pan more than approximately ¾ full, leaving room for the cake to rise without overflowing.
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Yummy! Lemon is a huge favourite around here :-) Looks beautiful too ;-)