This homemade Lemonade Cake with its bright, lemony flavor is perfect for spring and summer gatherings!
We just love lemon desserts, and this soft bundt cake is not only delicious, but it is simple to make too!
The lemonade flavor comes from frozen lemon concentrate as well as a splash of lemon extract for a cake that is a wonderful balance of tartness and sweetness.
How to Make Lemonade Cake
This lemonade cake is based on our scratch Orange Cake recipe, but swapping out the orange concentrate and extract for lemon!
You can find the full, printable recipe card further down in this post. Here is a quick look at our steps!
- First, preheat the oven to 325℉. Grease and flour a bundt pan. (We used a bundt pan with a 12 cup baking capacity, which measures 10 inches across.)
- Dry Ingredients: In a medium sized mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside.
- In another bowl, add the ¾ cup thawed lemonade concentrate, vegetable oil, milk and lemon extract. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and mix for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the lemonade mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. (That will be three additions of dry and two of liquid).
- Scoop the lemonade cake batter into the prepared bundt pan, and smooth over the top if needed with the back of a spoon.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool 5 to 10 minutes and turn out. *Baking times may vary based on the size of your pan, your oven, etc.
Easy Lemon Glaze
We love to dress up our bundt cakes and pound cakes with a simple glaze. Today's glaze a a combination of confectioners' sugar, a splash of milk, a pinch of salt, lemon extract, and yellow coloring.
The glaze not only makes the cake look nicer, but it also adds a boost of lemon flavor.
Yes! This cake will freeze beautifully. Whether you are baking in advance, or saving leftovers, simply wrap the cake tightly in plastic wrap, followed by tightly wrapped aluminum foil.
When baking in advance, we like to place the cake (still slightly warm) on a foil-wrapped cake cardboard, then cover in plastic wrap followed by foil.
When you are ready to defrost, move the wrapped cake to the refrigerator overnight, and then continue to thaw the next morning on the kitchen counter for a few hours or until time to serve. We like to remove the wrapping after the condensation has formed (after sitting about 40-45 minutes at room temperature).
We don't recommend this. If you were to use lemonade rather than lemonade concentrate, you will not have the same boost of lemon flavor or the nice bit of tartness that the concentrate provides. If you prefer not to use lemonade concentrate, you should try our Lemon Bundt Cake!
When frozen properly, this lemonade cake will stay fresh for up to three months! Once thawed, it will taste as fresh as the day it was wrapped.
For this cake, we used a 10 inch bundt pan which has a baking capacity of 12 cups. If you are baking with a smaller pan, you'll just need to make sure that you do not fill the batter more than ⅔-3/4 full (to prevent overflow).
You may also need to increase the bake time if using a smaller pan, as the batter will fill it a bit more than the pan that we used.
It can be spooned over the cooled cake, or applied with a disposable piping bag (with the tip snipped away) for more control.
Finally, we topped the cake with fresh lemon slices.
More Lemon Cakes
We've made many delicious Lemon Cakes over the years! Our Lemon Cake from Scratch and Lemon Velvet Cake are two of our most popular layer cakes. We also have a very popular Lemon Cake Mix recipe!
We're linking a few more favorites below. You can find a full listing here: Best Lemon Cakes, Frostings, and Fillings!
Enjoy the Recipe!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this Lemonade Cake as much as we have. It would be perfect for spring or summer birthdays, potlucks, or just because! The lemon lovers in your life will love it!
For even more Bundt Cakes, make sure to check out our collection of 30+ Bundt Cake Recipes!
Lemonade Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¾ cup (170g) unsalted butter, softened (The equivalent of 1 ½ sticks of butter)
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour
- 3 teaspoons (12g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoons (3g) salt
- ¾ cup (190g) lemonade concentrate, thawed
- ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil (we use canola oil)
- ½ cup (121g) milk (we use whole milk)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) Lemon extract
Easy Lemon Glaze
- 2 cups confectioners sugar (measure then sift)
- 3 tablespoons milk (add additional as needed in small increments)
- pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract
- Yellow Coloring Gel (very small amount) (Optional)
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 325℉. Grease and flour a bundt pan. We used a baking pan with a capacity of 12 cups (10 inches across).
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside.
- In another bowl, add the ¾ cup thawed lemonade concentrate, vegetable oil, milk and lemon extract. You'll notice that the milk takes on the look of buttermilk (thickened consistency). Set bowl aside after combining.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and mix at medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and mix for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the lemonade mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. (That will be three additions of dry and two of liquid).
- Scoop the lemonade cake batter into prepared bundt pan and smooth with the back of a spoon if needed.
- Bake at 325℉ 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool 5 to 10 minutes and turn out. *If the top begins to brown too much, lightly cover with aluminum foil for the last few minutes of baking.
Easy Lemon Glaze
- Combine ingredients, stirring until smooth. If it is too thick, add more. milk in small increments. If too thin, add additional confectioners sugar. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap until ready to use.
Decorating the Cake
- Once the cake has cooled, you can spoon the glaze over the cake, or for more control, you can spoon it into a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.
- We added thinly sliced lemons to the center of the cake for decoration.
Looks and sounds delish! :-)