Just six ingredients are all you need to bake the most flavorful and delicious Lemon Surprise Cake! If you happen to love Lemon Pound Cake as much as I do, try my from-scratch version! (Better yet, try this Cream Cheese Pound Cake. It’s award-winning!)
Lemon Surprise Cake
Why did I call this a lemon “surprise” cake? Because it has lemon-lime soda as an ingredient! I was a bit shocked that one little can of soda can make such a wonderful difference in a cake, but it did. I can’t wait to try this with other flavors!
Traditionally speaking, this is a lemon pound cake and has been around for many generations. Our grandmothers were masters of finding ways to save money and use what they had to create beautiful and delicious desserts.
What is a Lemon Surprise Cake?
This is actually considered a pound cake. The definition of pound cake is this: a rich cake containing a pound, or equal weights, of each chief ingredient, typically flour, butter, and sugar. One of the original lemon pound cake recipes was: (OH MY GOSH A DOZEN EGGS?!?!)
- 1 pound sugar
- 1 pound butter
- 1 pound flour
- 1 dozen eggs
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
With changes in the sourcing of flours, accessibility of ingredients, quality of butter, and the addition of extracts in baking, some modifications have been made to that original recipe.
So if you want to get technical, this lemon pound cake recipe does not have equal parts of flour, butter, and sugar. However, it still maintains the rich flavor and beautiful, dense crumb that is commonly associated with a pound cake.
Easy 7-Up Cake
As you can tell, this cake recipe is much easier! A few simple ingredients!
Lemon Surprise Cake
Ingredients
Lemon Cake
- 1 1/2 cup (339g or 3 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
- 3 cups (600g) granulated sugar
- 5 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (384g) all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp. McCormick Lemon Extract
- 3/4 cup lemon-lime soda, like 7-up or Sprite
Lemon Glaze
- 3 cups (375g) confectioners sugar
- 4 tablespoons salted butter, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon McCormick Lemon Extract
- 0-4 tablespoons milk (optional)
Instructions
Lemon Cake
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour (or spray with non-stick spray) a bundt pan.
- Cream sugar and butter in the bowl of stand mixer on medium speed until fluffy and light.
- With the mixer on low, add eggs one at a time and mix well.
- Add in lemon extract and soda and then slowly add in flour and mix until fully incorporated.
- Bake at 350°F for one hour and fifteen minutes or until inserted toothpick is removed with very few crumbs.
Lemon Glaze
- Place butter in bowl and mix (with hand-held mixer or stand mixer) until light. Add in confectioners sugar and extract. Mix until fully combined. (If frosting is too thick it can be thinned with a little milk.)
Video
Did you make this recipe?
Thank you for making my recipe! You took pictures, right? Well go ahead and post them on Instagram! Be sure to mention me @iambaker and use the hashtag #YouAreBaker.
Let me know if you try this super easy and delicious cake! Photography by Ashlee Marie.
Hi, I made the lemon surprise cake and the cake itself came out nice in the consistency, but I believe my lemon extract was outdated…it gave a hint of pinesol taste to it :/
and that was my fault. I will definitely try it again with a new lemon extract. I would like to use lemon juice if possible and was wondering if its been done with lemon juice instead of lemon extract.
Do you have a book?if yes how much and where can I get it
Thanks for your recipe but 2 tablespoons of lemon extract would be inedible. It is way too strong.
The icing was so thick I added three and a half tablespoons of milk and it ended up a buttercream frosting. How do you make it a runnier icing without adding lots of milk? And if so, how much milk?
So the video does it different melting the butter, but the recipe clearly says room temperature butter and mix until fluffy to start the “icing”. I know you say go by the recipe, not video, but this could be why it came out as a buttercream frosting instead of an icing?
This is yummy. Took about an hour and a half to cook. I added 1 1/2 cups frozen wild blueberries and cut the icing in half as we prefer things less sweet.
Just finished frosting the cake. Recipe was easy to follow but should include at least some milk in the frosting recipe. Added a little less than a qtr cup and ended up with a nice consistency. Smells fantastic, can’t wait to try it on Sunday. Happy Easter!
I made this cake for the first time for my sister who LOVES anything Lemon 🙂 I haven’t tasted it yet BUT I had to take my cake out 15 min early because it was starting to look really over cooked on the sides. No biggie , I am sure it is still delicious but one question I have is for the icing, I added quite a lot of milk but it just didn’t come out half as pretty as yours ,,, any suggestions?
Marlene, 7Up is lemon-lime soda.
Made this for the second time today with some adjustments. First, I didn’t bake it anywhere near an hour and fifteen minutes. I did it about 55 minutes, so it wouldn’t be too dry, I think it could have been shorter even. Second, and more importantly, is the icing adjustments. The first time I made it according to the directions and it came out as a buttercream, even with almost 4 tbsp. of milk. Then I noticed on the video, they use melted butter. I tried this and it worked! I added a little too much milk, so it got a little too runny, but much closer this time. Hope to perfect it with the right balance next time.
love your site & your recipes Going to try this one for sure SallyRan