How to Turn Yellow Cake Mix into Lemon Cake

Nothing like the golden glow of a lemon cake for summer weddings or dinner party sweets. There’s something utterly magnificent about that wonderful blend of flavor, texture, color, and overall atmosphere.

These cakes are even better when the lemony goodness is coupled with a golden tint.

Lemon cakes, unlike their fruit cousins, do not grow on trees, nor does yellow cake mix; they must be made.

Why shouldn’t you be that person?

Let’s see how to build your own yellow cake mix and combine it into a delicious lemon cake.

Mixing up Yellow Cake Mix

If you’ve never prepared a lemon cake before, you may believe the yellow hue originates from nature.

Nothing could be further from the truth. You must mix it yourself, which entails determining what hue you want and how to best achieve it.

You may assume yellow is yellow, but ask a florist, artist, wedding planner, or, yes, cake maker how many yellows there are, and youll receive a plethora of replies.

For example, do you want a brilliant, vivid yellow like sunflowers in nature or Van Gogh’s paintings? Or are you looking for a more subtle, almost beige or whitish-yellow that will look beautiful without taking center stage?

The yellow cake mix recipe provided here is for a light-ish, middle-of-the-road yellow cake, but you may adjust the hue by adding food coloring or other ingredients.

To begin, gather the necessary ingredients:

• Flour for all purposes
• Sugar, granulated
• Salt
• Milk
• Eggs (ideally on the bigger side) (preferably on the larger side)
• Oil from vegetables
• Butter (ideally pre-softened) (preferably pre-softened)
• Baking soda
• Vanilla flavoring

Precise proportions may vary, but the recipe link offers their guideline.

You’ll also need a stand mixer and a quart-sized mason jar to combine all of these components.

Fill the mason jar halfway with flour (the ideal ratio is 2 cups). If it’s the right size, this should fill a significant portion of the jar, at which point it’ll be time to start adding sugar, baking powder, and salt on top, in that order. This should practically fill your mason jar to the brim if you use the quantities suggested.

It’s time to shake things up.

Mix a suitable quantity of softened butter in a stand mixer for one to two minutes on an usual Medium speed.

After that, combine the dry ingredients you just combined in the mason jar with the butter in the mason jar for at least 30 seconds.

Mix in the milk, eggs, oil, and vanilla extract. If feasible, turn the volume up somewhat, but not too loud; a Medium High level for one minute would be great.

You’ll want to look at the color of the batter you just made. Is it enough yellow? This combination should provide a light yellow hue.

If you want something more bright, you might try adding food coloring or switching to yellow frosting.

At this stage, your yellow cake mix batter should be ready.

If you wish to continue cooking with it, put it in a baking dish and bake it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 25 minutes.

See below if you want to use your new yellow cake mix to make a lemon cake.

Creating Your Lemon Cake with Yellow Cake Mix

In addition to the cake mix you just produced, you’ll want to have a few more ingredients on hand, such as pudding mix and lemon juice, which will give your cake a lemony flavor.

If you’re daring and talented enough, you may even add genuine lemon slices.

In your cake mixer, combine the cake mix and pudding mix, along with a touch of vegetable oil, and beat on Medium for around 10 minutes. After that, take the newly whipped cake mixture and pour it into a pre-greased tube pan.

It is now time to bake your cake once again. This time, cook for much longer, around 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

As you take it out of the oven, add a splash of lemon juice to give even more lemony flavor.

In a saucepan, mix this with powdered sugar, then bring to a boil and whisk until it begins to congeal into a consistency that can be easily drizzled or spread over the top and edges of the cake.

A Few Tips and Tricks

Yet, you don’t want to go overboard with the lemon taste.

When it comes to baking, more isn’t always better, and lemon cakes are no exception. If you use too much lemon, you may end up with a cake that is too sour to eat.

Instead, aim for the perfect balance of sweetness and sourness that makes lemon cakes so delectably tart. If you’re using both lemon juice and lemon pudding mix, be sure you don’t overdo it on either.

A typical lemon yields roughly three teaspoons of lemon juice. Two lemons should plenty for the above-mentioned recipe, particularly if you’re also using lemon cake mix.

To get the finest lemon juice, cut your lemon in half and apply gentle pressure to each end of the half, or use a citrus squeezer. The latter approach may be effective for extracting pulp and seeds.

Lastly, some advice on your powdered sugar game. To get the best results, sift the bag a little before pouring it out, otherwise it will come out in clumps that won’t evenly distribute with your lemon juice.

Following these procedures, you may make a beautiful lemon cake using yellow cake mix that is as good as gold.