Lemon Coconut Cake (Doctored Cake Mix)

This delicious Lemon Coconut Cake has a velvety soft texture and wonderful flavor!

Soft lemon cake layers are glazed with luscious lemon curd and filled and frosted with whipped coconut cream cheese frosting in this delicious dessert. Nobody would guess that this is a cake mix recipe!

We love this combination of flavors and actually have a scratch version of Lemon Coconut Cake in our Cake Recipes section as well!

Table of Contents

Easy Lemon Coconut Cake Mix Recipe

You can find the full, printable cake recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps! **Note: Ignore the instructions on your box of cake mix.

Preheat: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Prepare the Pans: Grease and flour three 8x2 round cake pans. We like to line the bottom with parchment paper also.

Dry Ingredients: In the bowl of your mixer, combine the dry ingredients: white cake mix, cake flour, sugar, and salt. Mix to combine.

Milk & Lemon Mixture: Next, Add lemon juice, lemon extract, and lemon zest to the 1 ¼ cup milk (It will turn to a thickened, buttermilk consistency).

Add Remaining Ingredients: Add eggs, cream cheese, vegetable oil, and milk/lemon mixture to the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.

Mixing: Mix on medium speed with an electric mixer (we used a stand mixer with paddle attachment) for 2 minutes. You can stop at the halfway point to scrape the sides of the bowl down with a rubber spatula if needed).

Fill the Pans: Divide the cake batter between the three prepared 8 inch cake pans. Bake at 325 for 22-25 minutes. Baking times may vary, check with a toothpick or wooden skewer for doneness- if it comes out with no crumbs or just a few attached, they are ready.

Cool the Layers: Cool the freshly baked cake layers in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

How to Make Lemon Curd Filling

Lemon lovers will fall in love this this flavorful lemon curd filling! This is our go-to lemon filling- it is easy to make and so delicious.

Because our cake layers have a light lemon flavor, the lemon curd filling gives it a wonderful lemony boost of flavor.

Here are the steps, but you can find the full recipe further down in this post!

First, Combine sugar, cornstarch and water in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly, until mixture thickens.
Boil, stirring, for 1 minute more.. Remove the pan from the heat.

Spoon about ½ cup of the hot mixture into a small bowl with egg yolks and stir quickly until combined. Continue stirring, while pouring the egg mixture back into the saucepan.

Return pan to medium heat and cook, stirring, until the curd is thickened and lemon colored (1-2 min). Remove from heat and mix in the butter, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
Let the lemon curd cool, then press plastic wrap onto the surface, this will prevent a skin from forming on the top. It will cool more quickly if you pour into a shallow baking dish like a 9x12 casserole dish, etc.
Refrigerate until you are ready to assemble the cake. It should be cool when assembling the lemon coconut cake.

Frosting for Easy Lemon Coconut Cake

We used a light and delicious whipped coconut cream cheese frosting as a filling (along with the lemon curd) and as a frosting for our cake.

You could have also used a coconut cream cheese frosting (not whipped) or a coconut buttercream frosting (add 1 teaspoon coconut extract to our Classic Vanilla Buttercream recipe).

However, we wanted to go with something nice and light! The consistency of whipped coconut cream cheese frosting is much like whipped cream, but with a bit more stability.

It also has a hint of tanginess from the sweetened, softened cream cheese folded into it.

Assembling the Easy Lemon Coconut Cake

Place the first lemon cake layer on the cake plate or pedestal.

Pipe a dam of the whipped cream cheese frosting around the edge of the cake layer (about ¼ inch to ½ inch from the edge).

Fill with a layer of lemon curd, followed by a layer of whipped coconut cream cheese frosting. (I applied the dam as well as the filling with a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.)

Lemon Coconut Cake Mix Recipe- So delicious!

As you can see, I piped a spiral of the cream filling on top of the lemon curd, and then lightly spread it with an offset spatula.

This is much easier than trying to spread frosting on top of the very soft lemon curd filling.

Filling for Lemon Coconut Cake Mix Recipe

Repeat for the second cake layer, and then top with the third cake layer. Fill in any gaps between the cake layers with additional frosting.

Frost the cake with a layer of the coconut whipped cream cheese frosting. Then, press coconut all over the sides and top of the cake.

Lemon Coconut Cake-Piping Frosting Stars on Top

We had some leftover frosting which we used to pipe stars around the top edge of the cake with a french tip, and then we topped with small lemon wedges.

Lemon Coconut Cake- Doctored Box Mix Recipe

Recipe FAQs

Although many of our scratch cake recipes now have cream cheese as an ingredient in the cake batter (Strawberry Cake, Almond Cream Cake, etc), this is our first cake mix recipe that we've tried it with!

Cream cheese not only adds to the richness of the cake, but it does something magical to the texture as well ;0)

The additional fat in cream cheese as well as the boost of acidity (which softens gluten) are likely the reason for this. The cake layers are soft and have a wonderful velvety texture- if you haven't tried it, you must!

Here are just a few of our popular scratch recipes that contain cream cheese in the cake batter as well! We often refer to these as Velvet Cake recipes because of their velvety soft texture and fine crumb.

Lemon Velvet Cake, White Velvet Cake, Chocolate Velvet Cake, and Vanilla Velvet Cake are just a few favorites. We also have a wonderful cream cheese pound cake recipe!

Most cake mixes, including the cake mix that we used in our recipe, call for 3 eggs.

Adding an additional egg not only adds richness to the cake, but also makes it ever so slightly more dense (in a "from-scratch" way), resulting in a finer crumb.

Yes, because of the lemon curd and whipped coconut cream cheese frosting, this cake should be refrigerated until closer to serving time. Store in an airtight container, cake dome, or sealed bakery box.

For the very best flavor and texture, remove the cake from the refrigerator about 2-3 hours before serving.

This will allow the cake and frosting to soften, and will also enhance the flavor!

More Lemon Cake Recipes

We LOVE lemon desserts and have made many lemon cake recipes over the years!

I'm going to list a few of our favorites below (including another doctored lemon cake mix recipe), but you can find our full roundup of popular lemon cake recipes here: The Best Lemon Cake Recipes

Some of our most popular are our Scratch Lemon Cake, Limoncello Cake, Lemon Mascarpone Cake, and Lemon Blueberry Cake!

Enjoy the Recipe!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Don't miss our full Cake Recipes section, including our cake recipes from scratch and cake mix recipes!