I have a thing for cake mix based lemon cakes because I grew up on my great grandmother's signature Duncan Hines lemon cake -- the benchmark for all great lemon cakes. That one will never be displaced as number one for sentimental reasons, but I have had some good lemon cakes since, including the Starbucks Copycat Lemon Loaf recently put out by Better Homes and Gardens. It has 2 stars! LOL. Poor cake. But I made it and I think I know why.
Easy With Cake Mix
First off, this cake is easy, so if have an injury (like you dumped boiling water on your food and can barely walk) this one's easy to make. You do need to round up quite a few ingredients --- a box of lemon cake mix, cook & serve lemon pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, vegetable oil, milk, fresh lemon juice and powdered sugar for the glaze. Maybe get someone else to do that for you, then you can do the fun part, which is baking the cake.
Loaf Pan Sizes
Now here's the unfun part of the recipe from BHG. The original recipe from BHG calls for one 9x5 inch loaf pan. Well, I think they meant two because there's too much batter for a 9x5 inch loaf pan. I attempted to fill one anyway The batter came almost to the top so I spooned out enough (170 grams) for a mini loaf (2-cup capacity) -- probably should have spooned out another 170 grams because there was still too much left in the 9x5 loaf pan. Being such a diligent direction-follower, I baked it anyway and got a flat top large loaf and a beautiful mini. Lesson: When making cake mix based loaf cakes, you usually need to leave room for the batter to climb if you want a rounded top. So my mini cake was beautiful while my large cake was tasty but flat-topped.
Cake Texture and Flavor
The texture of this cake was interesting. At first I thought it was going to be too light and fluffy to be similar to coffee shop pound cake, but as it cooled and settled, it became heavier but still soft. I suppose if you leave it under a cake dome it will just get better and better and more like Starbucks. The flavor was good, but it could have been lemonier in my opinion. It wouldn't hurt to throw in some lemon zest, so I've added that to the revised recipe.
Lemon Cake White Icing
The cake really needs the lemon icing for extra lemon flavor. The original recipe called for 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. I used only 2 cups of powdered sugar and a lot more lemon juice. Another thing I did which I don't usually do is mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice together in a saucepan. This gave me the option of warming it gently to dissolve any sugar lumps quickly and allowed me to use less lemon juice to thin it so that it would be pourable, but still thick enough to crust over.
Recipe
Easy Cake Mix Lemon Loaf Cake
Ingredients
- 15.25 oz package Duncan Hines Signature Lemon Supreme Cake Mix
- 1 4.3 oz cook and serve lemon pudding mix
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup full fat sour cream
- ⅓ cup lemon juice
- ⅓ cup whole milk
- ⅓ cup neutral vegetable oil like sunflower
- 1-2 teaspoons lemon zest (optional)
Lemon Icing that Hardens
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 3-6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 8 ½ by 4 ½ inch or 6 mini (2 cup capacity) loaf pans. You could also use 1 9x5 inch pan and two mini loaf pans.
- Mix the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, lemon juice, milk, oil and lemon zest (if using) in a large bowl and beat for 2 minutes with an electric mixer.
- Pour batter into pan and bake. The total time will depend on which size loaf pans you've used. If you poured it all into a 9x5 inch pan, you'll need 60 minutes. If you divided it between two slightly smaller pans, start checking at 45 minutes. For mini loaves, you'll only need around 35 minutes.
- Let the cake cool on a wire rack. When completely cool, carefully spoon icing over the top and let it fall down the sides.
- Icing: Put the powdered sugar in a large mixing bowl OR in a medium size saucepan. Add 3 tablespoons of the lemon juice and stir vigorously until the mixture is thick, then continue adding lemon juice until is is thin enough to drizzle. If using a saucepan, you can mix it off heat in the saucepan, but warm it a little as you go just to melt it slightly and dissolve lumps so that you can pour it without adding tons more lemon juice.
- Spoon over the cake and allow iced cake to sit until icing is firm.
Leave a Reply