It’s the start of citrus season here in sunny California—let’s all celebrate with a homey, yummy Lemon Bundt Cake! I picked three lemons off my neighbor’s tree—which I have spent 20 years training to grow over my fence—to make this cake 🙂

The cake is barely even yellow but it tastes quite lemony and has a softly dense texture. Look at the short list of ingredients. All good stuff!

This is the sort of cake that has your family thinking, “Dang, no one makes cakes like Mom (or Dad)”. I found this recipe in the book, “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes, so I have probably been making this cake since 1998 or 1999, and with no end it sight! This is one of my favorite Bundt cakes.

Lemon Bundt Cake

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup softened butter
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 cup buttermilk, or milk, or cream, or sour soured milk
• 3 T freshly squeezed lemon juice—don’t use that stuff from the plastic lemon!
• 4 tsp grated lemon zest—I use a microplane

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 300°.
2. Prepare a 12-cup Bundt pan for baking—Pam for Baking is great, but so is using the wrappers from the butter cubes and then adding a small sprinkle of flour.
3. Cream butter and sugar, beating until light and creamy, about 5 minutes total.
4. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. In another bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
6. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, then add ½ of the buttermilk, then 1/3 of the flour mixture, then ½ of the buttermilk, then 1/3 of the flour, beating after each addition.
7. Add lemon juice and the grated zest to the cake batter, stir just to combine.
8. Pour mixture into a prepared Bundt pan.
9. Bake in preheated 300° oven for 50 – 70 minutes—original recipe said 50 minutes, but I always have to bake mine for 60-70 minutes.
10. Remove cake from oven and let cool on a rack for a few minutes. Then invert cake and let cool completely on rack.

INGREDIENTS

For Frosting

Note: The frosting is kind of temperamental, I’m not exactly sure why. It separates some times. To minimize this, have your butter at room temperature and beat with the powdered sugar until completely incorporated—like up to 3 minutes. Then add the lemon juice drop by drop, incorporating each drop before adding another. This might take another 3 minutes.

• ¼ cup softened butter
• 1½ cups powdered sugar
• 3 T. lemon juice
• grated zest of one lemon—optional

DIRECTIONS

1. Combine softened butter, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and optional zest—see note above
2. Casually glop the frosting on top of the cake, spreading to allow glaze to drip attractively down the sides. If desired, garnish cake top with curls of lemon rind.

Invite some friends over!  Have a nice little chat!  This cake is meant for casual sharing 🙂 Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today 🙂