Light and fluffy strawberry lemon cake layers, filled with homemade lemon curd and topped with a strawberry cream cheese frosting make up my Strawberry Lemonade Cake – the perfect spring or summer cake.
Making Lemonade Out of Lemons
My mom just moved into a new home in Los Angeles. One of the best things about her new place are the lemon trees in her backyard. She also has a herb garden and a few other fruit trees. (I’m so jealous! It’s making me want to get started on my garden boxes stat!). Well, being the fabulous mom that she is, she didn’t just bring me fresh lemons during her recent visit to Utah, she also brought me homemade lemon curd! There’s not a lot of things better in this life than homemade fruit curd. You can literally put it on or in anything – toast, croissants, tarts, cupcakes, and of course, cake! I love the punch of flavor it provides without being overwhelming. I also love a curd because once you have the basic recipe down, switching between flavors is so easy.

Strawberry Lemonade Cake
For this cake, I decided to pair the lemon curd with my strawberry cake. I had heard from a couple readers that my original strawberry cake recipe sank a little during baking. Though I haven’t had the problem, I didn’t want this to be an issue for anyone else! So, I made a few tweaks to the strawberrycake layers and am now confident they’ll rise perfectly for anyone.

There’s also some lemon zest in the cake layers, accentuating the flavor of the curd just a tad. The frosting is a strawberry cream cheese frosting, made with only a small amount of cream cheese and strawberry emulsion, neither of which are too strong but pair beautifully together.

I think one bite of this cake will get your taste buds dancing and make you think of summer!

Enjoy!
Just made this tonight for my husband for Father’s Day and WOWZA it was a hit!
Oh good! Glad you loved it!!!
Hey Courtney… I just have a question. In the description you said you use cake flour and all purpose flour but the recipe doesn’t have all purpose listed as an ingredient. My cake tasted delicious, but I was a little disappointed in the layers of cake, as they were only about 1 inch thick after dividing between 3 pans. Any suggestions for a little bit thicker flufflier layers? I followed the recipe exact. Thanks for sharing your gifts and talents. My daughter and I have hoped to attend one of your classes at Gygi’s!
Emily
I’m sorry about that typo. It’s just cake flour, and I took out a bit of sugar. The cake flour is what should make it taste light in texture. I would say my layers came out to be about 1.5 inches thick. Be careful not to over mix the batter and use room temp ingredients. You could also leave the batter out covered with plastic wrap for a few hours. This helps the dry ingredients better absorb the wet ingredients and will help the cake rise nicely.
Hi Courtney! Can you clarify how many eggs and how many yolks to use please. The ingredient list makes it sound like just the yolks, but in the instructions it states to wisk the whole eggs and yolks. Thank you! I am excited to make this!
Yes, sorry about that typo. It’s just the yolks
What is strawberry emulsion? Or strawberry oil? Can it be left out if I can not find it at the store?
Thanks so much!
Strawberry emulsion and strawberry oil are flavorings. They give the frosting the strawberry flavor without compromising the consistency like adding too much strawberry preserves might do. You could leave it out and do a lemon cream cheese frosting with lemon extract.
I didn’t have strawberry emulsion or oil, so I just added a little of the strawberry Jell-o powder and it turned out delish!!
Oh good to know!!!
Would this cake work with substituting a gluten free flour for the cake flour??? Or perhaps would it be better to add lemon zest and the strawberry jello to one of your gf cake options? Thanks for any tips!
If you use Cup4Cup GF Flour it’s a 1 to 1 substitute and should work great. The batter will be a little sticky but it should work great.