Easy vegan lemon olive oil cake using only 6 key ingredients and 1 bowl. This cake is fluffy, tender and light and perfect for Spring!
This light and zesty cake has a similar flavor profile to my vegan lemon poppy seed muffins, vegan lemon cake and lemon drizzle cake.
Key ingredients you'll need
Like the majority of my recipes, this vegan lemon cake uses only common ingredients including:
Ingredient notes
Extra Virgin Olive Oil adds moisture and flavor. Some types of olive oils are sweet while others are a little peppery so your cake will adopt the flavor of your particular oil.
Lemon juice and zest and lots of it for extra zing! Lemon juice is acidic so reacts with dairy-free milk to make buttermilk which makes a cake more tender. I used fresh lemon juice but bottled will also work.
A complete list of ingredients, quantities and instructions are in the gray recipe card at the bottom of this post.
How to prepare the batter
Like the majority of my cakes, you'll only need 1 mixing bowl to make this lemon olive oil cake! I loathe doing dishes so the less bowls/equipment, the better :).
Simply add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix until combined. Add all the wet ingredients and mix until smooth. The final batter should be a little runny without any lumps of flour or streaks of wet ingredients. Alternatively, you may use a stand mixer or hand mixer but be careful to not overmix the batter!
Pour the cake batter into an 8-inch (20 cm) lined loaf pan and bake it in your preheated oven. So easy! Your house will smell wonderful when the olive oil cake is done baking.
How to decorate this cake
This vegan lemon loaf is lovely with a simple powdered sugar icing which is made from only 2 ingredients. It sets at room temperature and doesn't collapse at room temperature for long periods of time (like buttercream does).
For a more decadent lemon cake, you can top it with a lemon buttercream frosting or cream cheese frosting (such as from my ginger cake recipe).
Alternatively, you can skip the icing and enjoy the vegan lemon cake plain, with berries or a light dusting of powdered sugar. This makes the cake a little less sweet!
Customizing this cake
For a less sweet cake, I'd recommend enjoying the cake without the icing (or with some powdered sugar on top).
The sugar can be slightly reduced to 1 cup (200g) in this recipe. However, keep in mind that sugar adds moisture to the cake, and balances out the sour lemon flavor and slight bitterness from the zest.
You can use coconut sugar in this vegan olive oil cake but it changes the flavor profile. Imagine eating a lemony caramel cake! I haven't tested this cake with alternatives such as monk fruit sweetener or erythritol.
I don't ever recommend replacing granulated sugar with a liquid sweetener in vegan cakes as it will make the cake too heavy and dense.
The lemon zest adds a complexity of flavor and an extra lemon punch but you don't have to add it. For a more mild lemon flavor, omit the zest.
Yes, but I recommend using my lemon blueberry cake recipe. It's similar to this vegan olive oil cake but the batter is thicker so the blueberries will not sink!
More vegan citrus desserts
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Vegan Lemon Olive Oil Cake
Ingredients
Vegan Lemon Olive Oil Cake
- 2 ½ cups (315g) all-purpose plain flour
- 1 ¼ cups (250g) granulated sugar
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch of any good quality salt, optional
- 1 cup (250g) dairy-free milk
- ½ cup (125g) extra virgin olive oil
- ⅓ cup (80g) lemon juice and zest, (about 2-3 lemons)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, optional
To decorate (optional, see note 1 for alternatives)
- 1 ½ cups (150g) powdered sugar / icing sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 cup (150g) fresh berries
Instructions
To make the cake:
- Preheat your oven to 180°C (355°F). Line an 8 inch (20 cm) loaf tin with parchment paper.
- Add all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) to a large mixing bowl. Mix until there are no lumps. Add all the wet ingredients (milk, oil, lemon juice/zest and vanilla) and mix until smooth.
- Pour the lemon cake batter into your prepared loaf tin. Smooth the surface if necessary.
- Bake the cake for 1 hour or until you can poke a skewer in the middle and there's no wet batter on it. As this is a moist cake, some crumbs on your skewer are fine.
- Allow the cake to cool in the loaf tin for 10 minutes then cool on a wire rack.
To make the icing:
- Add the lemon juice and sugar to a medium bowl and mix until smooth. Add more lemon juice (or dairy free milk) for a thinner icing or more powdered sugar for a thicker icing.
- Drizzle the icing over your cooled cake. If desired, top the cake with berries just before serving.
- Store the cake in an airtight container at room temperature for a day or in the fridge for up to 3 days. The cake can be stored without the icing in the freezer for up to 1 month.
Notes
- Alternatively, you can enjoy the cake plain, topped with fresh berries or a light dusting of powdered / icing sugar.
Nutrition
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I followed the recipe as written and found it was a really easy cake to make and I ended up with a lovely fluffy moist lemon cake. Couldn't be happier with this recipe!
Moist and tasty and tart sweet. Following others’ advice I just did one cup of sugar. I went a bit heavier on the lemon juice and added a half a ripe mashed banana since the batter seemed too thick at first. Adding the icing on top really kicks it up a notch. I like that olive oil is healthier than butters which have a lot of saturated fat.
The GF version didn’t work for me at all. The cake turned out soggy with unpleasant oily texture and unbalanced flavour. After reading other ratings seems I had a similar experience for the gf version. Very strange, I baked several recipes from your blog and they usually turned out great. Might be a difference in GF flour.
Oh I'm so incredibly sorry that it didn't work for you! I'll retest the gf version with a few different brands of flour and see if I can replicate what happened. I'm glad that you liked other recipes from my blog though. Thanks for letting me know x