Delicious and Fruity Raspberry Lemonade Cake Recipe

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Summer’s finally here! That means it’s time to take advantage of those fruity and summery flavours! Let’s face it, some fruits are sweeter this time of the year. So I love making this spin on our easy lemon cake recipe into a delicious and fruity raspberry lemonade cake recipe! Sounds delicious, right?!?

While our lemon cake recipe is one of my favourite recipes – it’s a light, fluffy, and easy recipe and it’s even better when you bump up the fruitiness with some fresh raspberries and raspberry buttercream. And it’s so easy to create this yummy cake! So jump to the recipe below or keep reading for tips to bake this cake successfully 🙂

but first, baking supplies and resources

Before we even get started with this recipe, here are a few of our top 3 baking and cake decorating posts for beginners! There are a lot of available resources plus baking supplies that you must have in your kitchen to help you successfully back and decorate a layer cake 🙂

1. The Best Cake Decorating Tools for Beginners
2. How to Assemble a Layer Cake
3. The Ultimate Guide to Baking Cakes

Don’t forget to check out the Making and Using Buttercream – Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial from Cake Flix! They have a ton of detailed cake decorating tutorials and videos for intricate cake designs!

Making the lemon cake batter

The first step I like to take when making this recipe is to wash the raspberries and lemons. You’ll be zesting the lemons so you have to wash them first!! And washing the raspberries is a given, right? 😅

Zest and juice the lemons and set aside. Cut the raspberries so they’re ready to go into the cake batter when the time comes. I like to cut them in half.

Then go ahead and sift together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. This recipe has cake (and pastry) flour, which is very clumpy, so it’s important to sift the dry ingredients (or at least mix them together with a fork or whisk).

Then, in the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter with a paddle attachment until it gets nice and smooth and creamy. You can gradually add the sugar at this point, while the mixer is still on.

Once the butter and sugar become light and fluffy, add the whole eggs and egg yolks, one at a time.

Add the vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest. At this point, your batter is going to start curdling and look like scrambled eggs. But don’t worry! It’ll all come together!

Continue mixing and add the dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk. Once the batter is combined, add the chopped raspberries at the very end. Try not to mix the batter too long after adding the raspberries, so the cake batter doesn’t turn pink 😉

Distribute the cake batter between your prepared cake pans or cupcake pans. This recipe is good for an 8” 3-layer cake or about 36 cupcakes.

MAKING THE RASPBERRY COULIS 

To flavour the buttercream frosting, you can add some raspberry jam, raspberry extract or flavouring, or keep it super fresh and make a raspberry coulis. To make a raspberry coulis, all you need is a pint of raspberries, ½ cup of water, 1 tablespoon of sugar and some lemon juice.

Add these ingredients to a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir together with a spatula and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. You’ll know that it’s ready when the reduction coats the back of the spatula. Note that the longer you cook the raspberries, the thicker the coulis will be 🙂 

Now, you want to get out all of that juice, so you need to strain the raspberry reduction through a fine sieve. Use your spatula to stir the raspberries and get as much juice as possible!

Wait for the raspberry coulis to cool before adding it to the buttercream. Add as much of the raspberry coulis as you like, to taste 🙂 If you don’t use all of it, you can use it for cheesecake, or ice cream, or in between the cake layers with the buttercream…mmmmm 😋

Enjoy this fruity treat on a hot summer day with your favourite cocktail 😉

Tried this recipe or have any questions? Comment below and let me know how it turned out!

Happy baking and munching!

Raspberry Lemonade Cake Recipe

Yield: 8″ Cake or 36 Cupcakes

Ingredients

Lemon/Raspberry Layer Cake

• 3 ¾ Cups Cake Flour (450g)
• 2 ½ Tsp Baking Powder (12g)
• ½ Tsp Baking Soda (3g)
• ½ Tsp Salt (3g)
• 1 ½ Cups Unsalted Butter, room temperature (340g)
• 3 Large Whole Eggs, room temperature (150g)
• 4 Large Egg Yolks, room temperature (60g)
• 2 Tsp Vanilla (12g)
• Juice and Zest of 2 Lemons
• ¾ Cup Buttermilk, room temperature (160g)
• 1 ¾ Cups Granulated Sugar (375g)
• 2 cups/1 pint Raspberries

raspberry coulis

• 2 cups/1 pint Raspberries
• 1/2 Cup Water
• 1 Tbsp Sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon

Buttercream frosting

• 454g Unsalted Butter – room temperature
• 1 1/2 Cups Icing Sugar (160g)
• 1/4 Cup Whipping Cream (45g)
• 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
• Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 Degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare 3 8″ pans with parchment paper and cooking spray.
2. Sift together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat butter with a paddle attachment until smooth and creamy.
4. Gradually add the sugar to the butter. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.
5. Add egg yolks and whole eggs, one at a time.
6. Add the lemon juice and zest, and vanilla.
7. Add the dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk (2 additions).
8. Add the raspberries and mix until just combined.
9. Divide the batter between your cake pans, and bake for about 35-40 minutes – until the toothpick comes out clean.
10. When the cake is cooled completely, assemble your cake with the buttercream – creating a 3-layered cake.
11. Enjoy!

MAKING THE RASPBERRY COULIS

1. Add the raspberries, water, sugar, and lemon to a small saucepan.
2. Stir together with a spatula and bring it to a boil.
3. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.
4. Strain the raspberry reduction through a fine sieve, using a spatula to drain as much juice as possible.
5. Set aside to cool.

Making the Buttercream Frosting

1. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the room-temperature butter until smooth and creamy.
2. On low speed, slowly add the icing sugar. Scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
3. Add the whipping cream, vanilla and salt. It may turn out clumpy at first, but continue to scrape down the sides of the bowl until the whipping cream is incorporated.
4. Continue mixing on high speed until the buttercream is light and fluffy.
5. Mix in the cooled raspberry coulis with the buttercream at low speed.

lemon cake RECIPE NOTES

• Be careful not to overmix and overbake. Mix until combined and check the cake every few minutes after you’ve hit the 30-minute mark in the oven.
• Cake didn’t come out as moist as you wanted? Add a little bit of simple syrup to each cake layer. I usually use 1:1.25 parts sugar to boiling water for my simple syrup.
• I always recommend using cake strips when baking cakes. They help your cake to bake evenly, and it reduces waste.
• Please feel free to contact me directly if this recipe looks like your own. I don’t recall where I found the original recipe, but I’d love to give credit to my inspiration 🙂