Lime Velvet Cake

This Lime Velvet Cake is so moist and soft with light and delicious lime flavor. It is perfect for spring and summer entertaining!

Named for its velvety soft crumb, this cake contains softened cream cheese in the cake batter, which adds richness and makes for a really nice texture.

We've created many versions of "velvet cakes" over the years, from white velvet cake to lemon velvet cake, orange velvet cake and more! We're happy to add today's lime velvet cake to the list!

Why we Love It

• Light and delicious
• Moist, Velvety Texture
• Wonderful flavor along with homemade lime curd filling
• Pairs nicely with lemon, coconut, or lime fillings and frostings.

How to Make Lime Velvet Cake

You can find the full, printable recipe at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8 inch pans. We like to line the bottom of our pans with circles of parchment paper.
• Dry Ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
• In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, vegetable oil, lime juice, and lime zest. Set aside.
• In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.

• Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 3 minutes.
• Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.

• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
• Divide the batter between the three prepared pans.
• Bake at 325 degrees F for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool for 5-10 minutes in the pans on a wire rack before turning out.

Lime Curd

We made a silky smooth and flavorful Lime Curd for our filling. If you've never made a curd filling before, you must try it! It really boosts the fruity flavor of the cake, and it couldn't be easier to make.

Our lime curd is prepared in a saucepan-- lime juice, lime zest, sugar, a bit of butter, egg yolks, water, and cornstarch to thicken. The mixture is combined and heated to a pudding-like thickness. It thickens even more as it cools.

Assembling the Cake

The frosting for today's cake is a Lime Cream Cheese frosting (the lime flavor is very light). This is a creamy frosting that is very easy to make and to decorate with- however, it is a bit softer than buttercream. If it ever becomes too soft, just pop it in the refrigerator for a few minutes!

• Once the cake layers have cooled, place the first layer on a cake plate or pedestal. Pipe a dam of cream cheese frosting about ¼-1/2 inch from the edge of the cake layer. (You can pipe the dam using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away).* If not using dam, just keep the curd from the edge of the cake layers to prevent it from escaping as the layers are stacked.
• Fill it with a layer of lime curd.

• You could just use lime curd as the filling, but we wanted to add a bit of frosting as well. To do this, we piped a spiral of frosting on top of the layer of lime curd.

• Next, top with the second cake layer are repeat the above steps. Then, top with the last cake layer. Fill in any remaining gaps between the layers with frosting. Frost the top and sides with a thin layer of frosting (this is the crumb coat).
• At this point, we like to chill the cake in the freezer for 15 minutes or longer in the refrigerator. This is optional but helpful as it firms everything up before applying the final coat of frosting (preventing sliding, etc.)
• Decorate the cake however you like! After frosting our cake with the second layer of frosting, we added texture using an offset spatula. Then, we piped shell borders on top using a large star (2D) piping tip and topped it off with a bit of lime zest.

Here's our finished cake! It is so good, keep this recipe in mind for your next special occasion!

More Fruity Cakes

We've made many light and fruity cakes over the years! Some of our favorites are Lemon Buttermilk Cake, Homemade Strawberry Cake, Pineapple Cake, and Coconut Cream Cake.

We also have some more great lime cakes as well including Coconut Lime Cake, Key Lime Cake, Margarita Pound Cake, and another Lime Cake from Scratch!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! We hope that you enjoy the recipe. Make sure to check out our full collection of cake recipes! We have lots more fruity cakes and cake decorating tutorials to share with you.