Lemon Sour Cream Cake

This Lemon Sour Cream Cake is ultra moist and has a wonderful lemon flavor!

We love lemon desserts, and we've added several lemon cakes, fillings, and frostings to our cake recipes section over the years-- this lemon layer cake is sure to be a new favorite! 

How Does Sour Cream Make Cakes Better?

Like buttermilk, sour cream boosts the acidity of the cake batter. This interferes with gluten formation, yielding a softer, more tender cake. Sour cream also adds richness without thinning the cake batter.

As an added bonus, sour cream also adds just a hint of tanginess which works perfectly in this lemon cake. The thick batter makes it ideal for add-ins like blueberries (as with our Lemon Blueberry Cake recipe). You are going to love this ultra moist, lemony cake! 

How to Make Lemon Sour Cream Cake

You can find the full, printable recipe card at bottom of post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three eight inch pans.

• In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. 

• In another bowl or measuring cup, combine these wet ingredients: sour cream, lemon juice and zest, vanilla extract and lemon extract. Blend with a fork and set aside

• In the bowl of your mixer, mix the softened butter until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and beat on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy!

• Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk is blended.

• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (This will mean 3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). 

• Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let the cakes cool 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.

Lemon Seven Minute Frosting

There are many fillings and frostings that would go perfectly with this lemon sour cream cake (from lemon curd to lemon cream cheese frosting to homemade lemon buttercream). Today, we decided to go with a fantastic Lemon Seven Minute Frosting.

Seven Minute Frostings are so billowy and light, and taste a bit like marshmallow fluff! To me, it has just the right amount of sweetness and I love the fluffy consistency that is created from whipping up a simple combination of sugar, water, egg whites, corn syrup, and flavoring over heat.

We have another version of seven minute frosting where our method is a little different. In that recipe, we slowly pour a stream of our heated sugar mixture into whipped egg whites and continue mixing until the desired stiff-peak consistency is reached.

The method in today's recipe is more traditional, and involves mixing the ingredients all at once over a double boiler (or makeshift double boiler).

Either method will give great results, and each has its advantages. If you are using a hand mixer, you may prefer today's recipe's method so that you don't have to juggle holding the mixer with one hand and pouring a stream of hot sugar with the other.

Assembling the Cake

Once the frosting is made, you'll want to use it immediately to frost your cooled three eight inch lemon sour cream cake layers.

We filled and frosted the cake with lemon seven minute frosting, getting it fairly smooth around the sides with my spatula/bench scraper. Then, we used an 8B french tip (use any large star tip for a similar effect) and piped dollops all over the top of the cake! This is such a pretty frosting.

Helpful Tips for Seven Minute Frosting

If you are new to seven minute frostings, take a quick look at these helpful hints. This isn't a difficult frosting to make, but these quick tips will ensure success!

• For the egg whites: cold eggs separate more easily than room temperature eggs. (We crack our eggs and separate the egg whites rather than using pasteurized egg whites from a carton. The consistency of the frosting holds up better this way!)

• It is a good idea to use a separate bowl when separating the egg whites.  If any yolk gets into the whites the recipe will not work. So, crack your egg and separate the white into a small bowl, empty that into your mixing bowl, and repeat. 

• There can be no trace of oil/grease in your bowl or beaters or the frosting will not whip up properly.

• When using flavorings, essential oils or oil based extracts can cause the frosting to deflate.

• Use a double boiler or a stainless steel/heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water (it should be a snug fit). Make sure the simmering water does not touch the bottom of the top bowl, if it does the frosting could become grainy. 

• On humid days, the frosting may take longer to whip up.

• This frosting cannot be made in advance, so have your cake or cupcakes ready to frost.

• This frosting is best the first 12 to 24 hours after frosting the cake.  After that, it still tastes great but will begin to slightly deflate and absorb into the cake.

More Lemon Recipes!

We've made lots of delicious lemon recipes over the years! Some of our most popular are Lemon Velvet Cake, Scratch Lemon Cake, Lemon Pound Cake, and Lemon Doctored Cake Mix.

Thanks so much for stopping by! We'd love for you to check out our full collection of cake recipes, which includes cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes.

If you're interested in cake decorating, we have hundreds of free cake decorating tutorials to share with you also! You'll find everything from how to frost a cake, to birthday cake ideas, baby shower cakes, and more.

Lemon Sour Cream Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This moist Lemon Sour Cream Cake is amazing! It pairs well with so many fillings and frostings, but in this recipe we've chosen a delightful Lemon Seven Minute Frosting. Enjoy!

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15

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Ingredients

For the Lemon Sour Cream Cake

• ▢ 2 sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened (226g)
• ▢ 2 cups sugar (400g)
• ▢ 3 large eggs, room temperature (If in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for five minutes.)
• ▢ 1 cup sour cream (242g)
• ▢ ⅓ cup — juice and zest of 2 lemons
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon lemon extract (10g)
• ▢ 3 cups cake flour (342g) if you do not have cake flour see substitution below
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder (7g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon baking soda (3g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (3g)

For the Lemon Seven Minute Frosting

• ▢ ⅔ cup water (150g)
• ▢ 2 cup sugar (400g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon Cream of Tartar or 2 Tablespoons (30g) white corn syrup (2g)
• ▢ 4 egg whites
• ▢ 2 teaspoons lemon extract (8g)

Instructions

For the Lemon Sour Cream Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour three 8x2 inch round cake pans. Three layers will give you slightly shorter layers but more filling per slice.
• In a medium sized bowl add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.
• In another bowl or measuring cup add the sour cream, lemon juice and zest, vanilla and lemon extract. Blend with a fork and set aside
• In the bowl of your mixer, beat the softened butter until smooth. Gradually ad the sugar and beat on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until it is lightened in color and fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
• Add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). Mix until combined and smooth, do not mix above medium speed or over mix.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let the cakes cool 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.
• Makes 7 cups cake batter
• (This recipe works well for cupcakes too)

For the Lemon Seven Minute Frosting

• In the top of a double boiler (see note below if you do not have one), combine the sugar, water, egg whites, and corn syrup or cream of tartar.
• Beat with an electric mixer at low speed for 30 seconds, then set the pan over simmering water. Continue beating at high speed for about 7 minutes, or until it's stiff and glossy. It may take longer than 7 minutes depending on humidity, etc.
• Remove from the heat, add the lemon extract and yellow coloring gel (optional), and beat for another 1 to 2 minutes. Do not over-mix.
• Frost the cake immediately as it will begin to set up/change consistency.

Cake Assembly

• We filled and frosted our three layer, 8 inch cake with the Lemon Seven Minute Frosting. I smoothed it around the sides of the filled cake, and piped billowy "stars" using an 8B french tip (any large star tip is good), all over the top of the cake.

Notes

If you do not have a double boiler, use a stainless steel or heatproof bowl that can fit snugly into a saucepan.

Substitution for Cake Flour:

For each cup of flour in the recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch. This recipe has 3 cups of flour, measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend.

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