Vegan Lemon Drizzle Cake! – Jane’s Patisserie

An easy vegan lemon drizzle loaf cake with a lemon icing drizzle, and some lemon zest!

Lemon drizzle

Lemon drizzle cake is one of the all-time classic flavours that everybody knows and loves. Yes, some people can think it is a little plain and boring… but how?! I adore it! If you are ever in doubt at a cafe on what cake to choose, always go lemon drizzle! (Or carrot cake, that’s also great.). 

I just feel with lemon drizzle you can always rely on the fact that it will taste great – partly to do with how many lemons are involved with the bake, and partly because the lemon drizzle part of it basically guarantees you aren’t going to get a dry and boring cake! 

Vegan baking

I have tried over the years to perfect my vegan sponges, and I am pretty darn proud of them! My vegan victoria sponge and my vegan biscoff cupcakes for example both have beautifully soft sponges that don’t require super weird ingredients, which was definitely the aim. 

I have tried many other recipes of the years and I was always a little put off when I had to buy a random ingredient I probably wouldn’t use the rest of or something that would sit in my cupboard for ages – so when developing these recipes I tried to base them off my normal recipes as much as I could! 

Butter and eggs replacement

When baking vegan it’s about (obviously) making sure there are no animal products, so for most normal bakes that would mean the butter and the eggs need replacing. Obviously, there are other ingredients, but if you base this on my normal lemon drizzle loaf cake recipe…

I find that using a mixture of oil, and vegan milk is the best result for replacing eggs and butter – I found when trying to use vegan butter, and only replacing the eggs some of the sponges would turn out really rubbery and horrible. It means the mixture is really runny, but trust me – it’s meant to be! 

The key to my vegan sponges is to mix the mixture as little as possible, so you don’t over mix. I just use a bowl, and a spatula to make my vegan cake mix, and that’s all you need – you really do not want to use a stand mixer for this bit as it can easily overdo the mixture! 

Milk replacement

I like using almond milk for the milk in my vegan cakes – but soya, oat, or anything like that works! Generally, I would avoid coconut milk as it’s just a different base and consistency to the others. For the oil, I use vegetable or sunflower oil as they are the most tasteless out of the selection – using olive oil may result in an olive oil taste. 

Other ingredient replacements

You have to make sure that all other ingredients you use are vegan, especially if baking for allergies, and I do mean check everything – as some products have may contain warnings. I use Tate & Lyle icing sugar as it doesn’t contain egg (if it does, you have probably bought royal icing sugar by accident which is a different thing), but some regular icing sugars have a ‘may contain’ warning. 

Sugar

For the sugar I used a mix of light brown soft sugar and caster sugar – you don’t want too heavy a flavour so it covers the flavour of the lemon, but you also want some colour from the light brown sugar. If you use all caster sugar, it will work – it will just be extremely pale in colour! 

Lemons

I used fresh lemon zest in this bake as I wanted to use the inside of the lemons for the drizzle soak and the icing drizzle – but if you wanted to use lemon extract you can! Use 1-2tsps in the sponge, and 1tsp in the icing drizzle! You can’t really beat lemon juice for the drizzle soak though (but bottled does work!). 

Raising agents

The raising agents are required in the bake for the best result – the white wine vinegar and bicarb react together as a raising agent, and the baking powder gives a lighter texture – so please don’t miss any of these out! I use all three ingredients in quite a few of my bakes such as my red velvet cake, so they are worth getting. 

Tins and tips

I used a 2lb loaf tin for my bake, but if you wanted to make a round cake version, follow my vegan victoria sponge but make it lemon flavoured! If you want to make lemon cupcakes, follow my vegan vanilla cupcake recipe and make them lemon flavoured! 

I hope you love this cake as much as I do!! Enjoy! Jane x

For the Cake

• 335 g self-raising flour
• 115 g light brown soft sugar
• 115 g caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 300 ml dairy free milk (I use Almond)
• 125 ml vegetable oil (or sunflower)
• Zest of 2 lemons
• 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Drizzle

• 65 ml lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
• 65 g caster sugar

Decoration

• 50 g icing sugar
• 2-3 tsps lemon juice
• lemon Zest

For the Cake

• Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan and grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin.

• In a large bowl, add the self raising flour, light brown soft sugar, caster sugar, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and mix briefly until it’s all mixed together evenly.

• Add the dairy free milk, vegetable oil, lemon zest and white wine vinegar to the bowl.

• Mix as little as possible, until combined. I use a large glass bowl and a spatula – I do not use an electric mixer.

• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, or until baked through.

For the Drizzle

• Towards the end of baking, mix together the lemon juice and caster sugar in a bowl.

• Once the cake is baked and out of the oven, pour the lemon drizzle onto the sponge

• Once drizzled, leave the cake to cool fully in the tin.

For the Decoration

• In a bowl, add the icing sugar. Add the lemon juice 1 tsp at a time, mixing really well each time, until you reach your desired drizzle.

• Drizzle over the cake, once it is out of the tin, and then sprinkle on some lemon zest.

• This recipe is based on a mix of my Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes and Vegan Biscoff Cupcakes recipes!
• I used Tate & Lyle Icing Sugar which is a vegan icing sugar. 
• This cake is very soft – and will last for at least five days! If you want the cake slightly firmer, try using plain flour, and no baking powder (it may not rise as much though!)
• If your sponge turns out rubbery, it’s most likely over mixed. I personally have never experienced this!
• I use this 2lb loaf tin in my recipe. 

ENJOY!

Find my other recipes on my Recipes Page!

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J x

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