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The ultimate round lemon drizzle cake cooked in the air fryer. This lemon drizzle cake recipe is the easiest ever to prep, cooks perfectly in the air fryer, is moist and flavoursome and you will want to go back for a second slice.
Even better, the washing up is fast thanks to the use of a round silicone baking pan.
Table of Contents
- Round Lemon Drizzle Cake
- Are You New To The Air Fryer?
- What Is A Drizzle Cake?
- Best Lemon Drizzle Cake
- What Does Lemon Drizzle Cake Taste Like?
- Why Is My Lemon Drizzle Cake Soggy?
- Air Fryer Lemon Cake (2 Ways)
- Lemon Drizzle Cake Ingredients
- Lemon Drizzle Cake Icing
- How To Make Lemon Drizzle Cake?
- How Long Does It Take To Cook A Round Lemon Drizzle Cake?
- Lemon Drizzle Cake Tips & Tricks
- Listen To Air Fryer Lemon Drizzle Cake
- Air Fryer Cake Recipes From Scratch
- Air Fryer Round Lemon Drizzle Cake Recipe
- Can’t make it now? Then save it for later!
Round Lemon Drizzle Cake
I love recipe requests that we get on Recipe This. Its nice to see what our readers want to make with their kitchen gadgets and lets me try something new along the way. That’s how our instant pot swiss steak, air fryer doughnuts, bread machine pizza dough and our soup maker French onion soup became a thing.
So, when a regular reader of ours from England asked us to make a Mary Berry Lemon Drizzle Cake and adapted it to the air fryer we were up for the challenge and looking forward to it.
After all, we love an air fryer cake and adapting it with the times and temperatures that are needed to cook it perfectly in the air fryer.
But that is not the only thing you need to adapt when cooking cakes in the air fryer. Another big part of it is finding a way for it to fit in the air fryer. After all, if you have an air fryer basket, its not your standard cake size.
That is why I came up with the idea of making a round lemon drizzle cake. I could use my favourite round silicone cake pans (get them here) that I have used in my air fryer carrot cake and air fryer Christmas cake and see how close it could be to a lemon drizzle traybake.
Are You New To The Air Fryer?
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What Is A Drizzle Cake?
A drizzle cake is simply a cake that has a different type of icing over it. Instead of a traditional icing where the icing sugar is mixed with butter, the icing is mixed with water or citrus fruit juice instead.
This produces a thinner coating on the cake and creates a yummy taste and texture but isn’t as heavy as other cake icing.
If you are making an orange drizzle cake then you could use the juice from an orange, or with us making a lemon drizzle cake we are in fact using juice from a small lemon.
Beyond the icing, a drizzle cake is like any other cake. So, you could do a lemon drizzle cake, orange drizzle cake, apple drizzle cake and many other versions.
Best Lemon Drizzle Cake
My inspiration for the best lemon drizzle cake is my AMAZING grandma Kitty. She sadly died from an asthma attack when I was 18 and was the best baker I ever knew.
She taught me to make great cakes and to add a little extra liquid than what a cake recipe suggested to make it more moist.
So, this easy lemon drizzle cake is a mix of my grandma’s, Bero and Mary Berry.
What Does Lemon Drizzle Cake Taste Like?
Our lemon drizzle cake tastes like a moist sponge cake with a yummy lemon flavour to it. Its not too strong on the lemon that it takes your attention away from the cake, but enough so that the lemon adds a great flavour.
You also get a lovely hint of lemon from the lemon drizzle icing.
Why Is My Lemon Drizzle Cake Soggy?
This is the main question I get asked about a lemon drizzle cake and other cakes. Its often because the air fryer hasn’t been at the right temperature to create a crisp on top, or that the ratio of wet ingredients to dry ingredients have not been followed correctly.
Check out our lemon drizzle cake batter and note how thick it is:
And if yours is too thin, I recommend mixing in a little extra flour so that it wont go soggy when cooked.
Air Fryer Lemon Cake (2 Ways)
This lemon drizzle cake recipe is actually part 1 of 2 of our air fryer lemon cakes. I love to make use of my ingredients and make more than one thing with them.
What I did was make enough lemon cake batter for two cakes:
And then you are doing all the prep at once and can make your baking more interesting. One lot of cake batter went into the Philips Air Fryer and the other into the Cosori Air Fryer.
Then whilst the first became our easy lemon drizzle cake, the other became delicious Mr Kipling Lemon Slices. Which was like taking the batter, adding two layers of icing, and cutting into slices.
Lemon Drizzle Cake Ingredients
Lemons – We opted for some Tesco seedless lemons, but any lemons will do. Aim for small to medium so that your simple lemon drizzle cake doesn’t end up with more lemon in than ours.
Flour – For best results I recommend self raising flour. And for making your lemon drizzle cake the best ever, opt for a better quality flour such as bero.
Sugar – I recommend using caster sugar like you did when you learnt how to make basic cakes at school. It’s a lot sweeter than some other white sugars and this means you don’t need to use as much.
Eggs – You will need 4 large eggs to combine the ingredients and make the cake with.
Butter – I have always made the best lemon drizzle cake with butter. When I have swapped the butter for margarine it has never been as moist.
Milk – I also add a little milk at the end of the mixing. This is to make sure the lemon cake batter is really creamy and it will be a light cake.
Vanilla – Then for a little bit of extra flavour I also recommend adding some vanilla essence. It really gives your lemon drizzle cake recipe the wow factor.
Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in this air fryer lemon drizzle recipe it has just been our Cosori Air Fryer XL. We have this one and its wonderful for many types of air fryer recipes.
Plus, we recommend you head over to our air fryer recipes category as we have more than 500 tried and tested air fryer recipes and have been air frying for 10 years.
Lemon Drizzle Cake Icing
Then for the lemon drizzle icing ingredients you will need:
- Icing Sugar (Confectioner’s sugar in the USA)
- Lemon Juice
Yes, seriously! Just two simple ingredients to make the lemon drizzle over the lemon cake.
Instead of making a thin icing (its thin on a drizzle cake) you just add lemon juice to your icing sugar and mix until you have the right consistency.
How To Make Lemon Drizzle Cake?
- Start. Into a bowl add butter and sugar and using a hand mixer, mix the sugar into the fat until it is creamy.
- Add. Next add in eggs, vanilla essence and lemon zest and mix again.
- Gradually. Next add in the flour and milk and the lemon juice gradually as you mix with the hand mixer.
- Pour. Next make sure it is of a creamy cake batter consistency and then pour into silicone baking pans.
- Cook. Place your silicone in the air fryer and air fry for 35 minutes.
- Beeps. When the air fryer beeps, allow to cool and remove from the silicone.
- Icing. As it cools mix together the juice from 2 large lemons with some icing sugar. Mix with a spoon until you have a lemon drizzle.
- Drizzle. Finally take your lemon drizzle icing and slowly drizzle left to right and then top to bottom until you have a nice lemon drizzle over your lemon cake.
And I am sure you can see now how easy it is to lemon drizzle cake and lemon drizzle icing and how the help of the hand mixer and the air fryer can change the way you bake.
How Long Does It Take To Cook A Round Lemon Drizzle Cake?
The air fryer cook time for cake, can be a little long. This is because you need to balance the cook time with preventing the lemon drizzle cake from overcooking on top.
But its truly worth it when you taste your moist lemon drizzle cake.
We do three different temperatures is our lemon drizzle recipe:
- 15 minutes at 180c/360f for the first cook of the batter
- 10 minutes at 170c/340f to slow down the lemon cake on top and focus on the middle
- 10 minutes at 160c/320f for the final cooking of the cake
Lemon Drizzle Cake Tips & Tricks
- For more information on the air fryer cake pan we use, check out our air fryer brownies recipe. It’s the same container and perfect for avoiding loads of scrubbing of a cake pan later.
- Use silicone. It is a game changer for the air fryer, and you will be amazed at the results. I couldn’t imagine going back to scrubbing baking pans again.
- You don’t have to make a round lemon drizzle cake, I just find it fits the air fryer perfectly.
- You can decrease the lemon if you don’t want your cake as lemony.
- You can also add a layer of lemon curd and sandwich two lemon cakes together.
Interesting Air Fryer Trick – You can use this exact same cook time and method for many different cakes in the air fryer. We find that 170c/340f is ideal for cooking the centre of the cake and not overcooking the cake on top.
Listen To Air Fryer Lemon Drizzle Cake
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Air Fryer Cake Recipes From Scratch
- Air Fryer Victoria Sandwich
- Air Fryer Jammie Dodger Cake
- Air Fryer Doughnut Cake
- Air Fryer Chocolate Cake
- Air Fryer Carrot Cake
Your lemon drizzle cake air fryer recipe is below, note you can print it out with or without photos, adjust servings, or click between metric and imperial depending on where you are in the world.
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Air Fryer Round Lemon Drizzle Cake
Ingredients
- 225 g Butter
- 225 g Caster Sugar
- 275 g Self Raising Flour
- 4 Large Eggs
- 4 Tbsp Semi Skimmed Milk
- 2 Medium Lemons, rind and juice
- 1 Tbsp Vanilla Essence
- Lemon Drizzle Icing
- 4 Tbsp Icing Sugar
- 2 Large Lemons, juice only
Kitchen Gadgets
Instructions
- Place into a bowl the butter and the caster sugar and use a hand mixer to mix until the fats are creamy and don’t have a gritty sugar texture.
- Next crack into the bowl your eggs, add your vanilla and your lemon zest and mix slowly with the hand mixer.
- Then add in slowly the flour and the milk along with the lemon juice from your medium lemons. Then mix well until you have a creamy lemon cake batter.
- Pour the cake batter into two silicone baking pans and then place the silicone into the air fryer.
- Air fry for 15 minutes at 180c/360f, then 10 minutes at 170c/340f followed by a final 10 minutes at 160c/320f. Or until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Then remove the lemon cakes from the air fryer and allow to cool, before peeling the silicone away from the cakes.
- Place the icing sugar and lemon juice from the two large lemons into a small bowl and mix with a spoon until you have a creamy, little wet icing.
- Use a spoon to spoon on the lemon drizzle icing. Its easiest to do 4 left to right drizzles and then 4 top to bottom. Kind of like you are getting ready for a game of noughts and crosses. Then sprinkle with a little extra lemon zest.
Notes
Nutrition
Can’t make it now? Then save it for later!
could you use 2 x 1lb rectangular silicon loaf pans for this recipe and would doing this affect the cooking time?
Hi Liz,
The cooking time would be affected if you are cooking them in the same air fryer or separate ones. I would add more time if cooking them together but take away time if cooking one on its own. Because we did it in the round cake tins we cannot say for sure how long the loaf tins will take to cook fully 🙂
Can you suggest how I might make this with a polenta/flour mix, rather than just flour, please? I like the denser texture and ‘bite’ that polenta gives to the mix…
Hi Sweet Tart,
We have never cooked with polenta before in a cake so i cannot comment what it would be like and how much to use, but you can try our cornbread recipe and add some lemon and sugar to it, is the closet we have on the blog 🙂
In the process of baking as I write this! I found your recipe easy to follow so thank you! I will update here shortly and am looking forward to! Now following on Pinterest 🙂
I can’t see anywhere what size silicon cake tine you used for this quantity. Thanks
S
Hi Sara,
Sorry about that. We use a 7 inch silicone cake pan 🙂
I’ve tried this recipe today and the cake looked cooked on top and when I tested it it seemed cooked. When I turned it out it was cooked on the top about 1″ deep, but runny underneath. I cooked as instructed for 35mins. Any idea what went wrong please.
Hi Liz,
How high did you have your batter in the cake pan? We only fill it less than half otherwise if you fill it quite full it will not be cooked through like yours, A good tip to help is put a cocktail stick through the cake and if it comes out clean it is ready but if it comes out covered in cake mix it needs to go back in. If you find this has happened then put the cake back in and cook for further 10-15 minutes on a lowish heat 160c/320f just to cook inside the cake and not continue cooking on top 🙂
I can’t understand the quantities for the ingredients! Isn’t there a way
to get the amounts in what we in the USA understand and are familiar with??
I was interested in your Lemon Drizzle Cake, but can’t understand it!
Hi Ruth,
What seems to be the issue? We use grams or imperial measurements and under the ingredients we use a metric system and you can switch between the 2. Use which ever one you find the best 🙂
She means she would like a recipe in straightforward cups. An imperial conversion to 7.94oz of butter/sugar isn’t really useful to Americans who use cups rather than digital scales!
Hi,
Yes the recipe card does convert but it is automatic, so it decides if it uses cups or ozs. 225g of flour would be 1 3/4 cups 🙂
You make it look easy and your instructions are really helping us with gaining more confidence with the air fryer. I have found some things difficult to do but your tips and tricks are really helping.