Easy Lemon Sponge Cake UK Recipe

For me, one of the easiest ways to make a sponge cake is with the all-in-one method this makes this recipe very simple and quick to do and another great recipe that you can do with the kids. It is also a great fallback sponge cake recipe and you can easily change the flavourings in this recipe to adapt it to any type of sponge cake you want, I’ve included a few variations below.
This all in one method is just so much quicker than the usual sponge cake recipe. Where instead of adding the ingredients in stages - creaming the butter and sugar, then adding the eggs and then folding in the dry ingredients - the allinone method is as you’d expect, you just simply beat all the ingredients together in one go. The cake mixing can be done by hand but the texture is even better if you whip up this cake batter by using a hand mixer, free-standing mixer or food processor, and this makes this is an even quicker cake recipe to do!

Contents: Easy Lemon Cake Recipe - Ingredients UK Measurements | How to Make Basic Lemon Sponge Cake - Method | More AllinOne Cake Recipes

Because you are not beating as much air in as you would when you add the ingredients in stages, extra baking powder is used in the recipe to help the cakes rise. Another trick to great cake baking (for any type of sponge cake) is that they can be made more light and airy by using cake flour, which is lighter flour than the usual plain flour. However, you can also get the same effect by using plain flour and replacing some of the quantity in the recipe with cornflour, and in this simple lemon sponge cake recipe, I’ve use custard powder - which is basically cornflour.

Easy Lemon Cake Recipe - Ingredients UK Measurements

Easy Lemon Sponge Cake - UK Recipe

Ingredients
225g soft butter
225g caster sugar
200g plain flour
25g custard powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 eggs
Zest of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons of milk

How to Make Basic Lemon Sponge Cake - Method
Method
1. Butter and line the bases of 2 x 20cm round cake tins
2. Preheat 180C
3. Put all the ingredients, except the milk, into a large mixing bowl and beat together till smooth - about 2 minutes. If you want you can do this with a mixer or food processor – and beat together to a smooth batter.
4. You want it to have a dropping consistency, so at this point add some milk a tablespoon at a time till you can the right consistency.
5. Pour into tins, smooth the tops to make they are level. Bake 25 minutes until golden and springy. Put the tins on a cooling rack, leave for 10 minutes then turn the cakes out of tins, removing the lining paper. And leave to cool completely.
6. For a simple filling and topping for this lemon sponge cake recipe - sandwich with raspberry jam and sprinkle the top with caster sugar.
For a more lemony cake and a delicious summery birthday cake idea - sandwich the sponge cakes with a layer of lemon curd then a layer of whipped cream. Dust the top with icing sugar.

More AllinOne Cake Recipes and Ideas
Alternative ingredients and flavour ideas

• You can replace the plain flour with self-raising flour and then you’ll only need 1 tsp of baking powder
• You can use custard powder or cornflour
• This easy lemon cake recipe can be used as a basis for other types of sponge cakes. For example:
• Simple almond sponge: replace the vanilla with almond extract and the custard powder with ground almonds.
• Easy coffee sponge: replace the lemon zest with coffee extract or instant espresso powder.
• Basic vanilla sponge cake recipe - replace the lemon zest with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or with the seeds from half a vanilla pod. Or replace the caster sugar with vanilla caster sugar (i.e. store your caster sugar with a split vanilla pod in the jar so that it will flavour the sugar).