Lemon Lavender Cake

This Lemon Lavender Cake is the perfect balance between sweet, tart, and floral flavors. Cloaked in lavender buttercream and paired with creamy lemon filling, this lightly floral, ultra chic cake is perfect for any spring or summer celebration.

How to Make a Lavender and Lemon Cake

• Grind the dried lavender - use a mortar and pestle, mini food processor, or spice grinder
• Make the cake batter - this easy cake batter can be stirred together by hand or with an electric mixer. Combine the dry ingredients and sugar (with the lavender) in a large bowl. Whisk together all of the wet ingredients - milk, eggs, vanilla, melted butter, and oil. Pour the wet into the dry and mix until smooth.
• Bake the cake - bake the cake in three, 6-inch cake pans.
• Make the lavender buttercream - Again, grind the lavender with the sugar before mixing into the whipped buttercream. Mix thoroughly until light and fluffy.
• Make the lemon filling - similar to the whipped lavender buttercream, make a lemon version with lemon zest and fresh lemon juice.
• Finally, Assemble the cake - use the lemon cream for filling and and the lavender buttercream to ice the cake. Decorate as desired.
• Sift out the large lavender pieces with a fine mesh strainer or sieve before making the buttercream for a totally smooth icing.

Lavender Buttercream Flower Cake

My favorite buttercream flowers are easy to make and can be piped directly on the cake. I used the same piping tips and techniques from this buttercream flower cake, but piped the flowers around the sides of the cake instead of on top.

For the large fuchsia rosettes, use a 1M star tip to pipe tight spirals on the the sides of the cake. Leave a little room in between rosettes and don't pipe in an exact straight line.

For the light purple rosettes and stars, I used piping tips #32 and #18 to fill in the gaps between the large rosettes. Use these tips to pipe mini spirals or stars. Add sugar pearl or sprinkles to finish.

Lavender Cake Recipe FAQs

Baking with Lavender

Infusing aromatic, crushed lavender into the batter elevates this basic vanilla cake without making it taste like perfume or soapy. When used in large amounts, the lavender flavor is quite strong. It is important to get the balance just right.

Often times we infuse or steep flavorings like herbs or spices by heating with a liquid. This usually looks like steeping cinnamon in the milk used for a cake or melting butter with tea before adding to a cookie recipe.

For this lavender cake recipe, we grind a small amount of dried culinary lavender with the granulated sugar. I recommend grinding the lavender with granulated sugar using a mortar and pestle. The abrasive sugar quickly helps break down the lavender.

You may also use a mini food processor or a spice grinder to grind the dried lavender.

What Type of Lavender to Use

I love using flowers in baking but not all lavender is safe to eat. Use dried culinary lavender for baking and cooking with lavender.

Instead of picking buds from your garden, use lavender labeled for culinary use only.

Look for culinary lavender in the spice section of large grocery store, speciality markets, or online.

Ingredients in Lavender Cake

• All-purpose flour - if using measuring cups, make sure to fluff up the flour then spoon and level. 1 cup of flour weighs 125 grams.
• Granulated sugar
• Large eggs
• Milk
• Unsalted butter - melted and cooled
• Neutral oil - like avocado oil or vegetable oil
• Dried culinary lavender - look for this in the spice sections of large or specialty grocery stores

Tools and Equipment

This lavender cake recipe is similar to my one-bowl vanilla cake. It can be made by hand or with a mixer. I prefer a large mixing bowl and hand mixer for a super quick batter. You will also need:

• Mini food processor, spice grinder, or mortar and pestle
• Three, 6-inch cake pans
• Electric mixer (optional for cake but needed for the buttercream)
• Cake decorating tools (offset spatula, rotating cake stand, frosting smoother, piping bag and tips)
• General cooking tools (rubber spatulas, measuring spoons, etc.)

This small celebration cake is made up of three layers of moist and fluffy lavender cake. Lemon filling brightens up the cake with its zesty flavor. At first bite, you'll find that the tart citrus pairs perfectly with floral lavender.

You would never believe that something this beautiful would be so easy to make. It is basically the easiest cake batter to make next to boxed cake mix. You can mix it by hand or with an electric mixer.

Dried culinary lavender is used two ways - in the cake batter and in the lavender buttercream frosting. The delicate taste from using dried lavender buds blends beautifully into the creamy frosting.

Storage

Serve the lemon lavender cake at room temperature. It can be stored in a cake box over night in a cool room. Keep leftovers wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.

To freeze the cake layers, wait until they are completely cool then wrap well in plastic wrap. Freeze in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw frozen cake layers in the refrigerator overnight before use. 

Variations

Blackberry Lavender Cake - lavender and blackberry go so well together. Replace the lemon cream filling with blackberry jam for a fruity variation.

Vanilla Lavender Cake - Skip the lemon all together and fill the cake with vanilla whipped buttercream frosting.

Lavender Lemon Curd Cake - Replace the lemon cream filling with tangy lemon curd. Keep in mind that the cake will need to be refrigerated. And don't forget to pipe a buttercream dam around the edges to keep the filling inside!

Recipe