Lemon Sunflower Cake

Make this easy Lemon Sunflower Cake for a lazy summer’s day, it’s a lemon flavoured sponge cake with easy decoration to look like a sunflower. The perfect centrepiece for a summer party table!

Updated 2026 · Now with printable recipe sheet – originally featured on BabyCentre

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A quick and easy cake to ease me back into blogging – I never meant to vanish but blink and suddenly two days is two weeks.

Yesterday I downloaded an ebook called Project Organise Your Entire Life and one of the introductory paragraphs talks about how you sort of sort yourself out for a bit then the whole family gets sick. Or in my case, just me and that tends to derail the blog. Primarily instead, whilst recuperating, I am frantically treading water feeding and administering the family, fulfilling freelance commitments and – whew! – trying to keep cool in what must be the most prolonged spell of humid weather I’ve ever known. My office would have made an ideal Ashtanga yoga studio last week.

I like to go easy on myself workwise in summer. Ted has broken up from school and although he’s at playscheme whilst I work for half the week, I intend to repeat last year’s jamboree summer holiday for the rest of the time.

The second I iced this cake and for the entire time I was photographing it, I couldn’t get “Sunflower” by Glen Campbell out of my head.

My mother used to play a lot of Glen Campbell when I was young and I can’t say I appreciated it at the time but I do enjoy his music now. The scary part is that most of what she played me I hated then but rather like now.

I don’t remember her playing Sunflower but Robert Elms on BBC London plays it often so that must be where I picked it up.

It’s impossible to feel down when you look at a sunflower (although probably Van Gogh did) and the same is true of listening to this chirpy song. It sounds like exactly the thing you’d hear in an advert although I don’t remember it being used in one. Feel free to correct me!

What do sunflowers remind you of? (and yes the picture below does look like a face)

Print Recipe

Lemon Sunflower Cake

Serves 8

Servings: 8

Equipment

• 2 x 6inch non stick sandwich tins lined with baking parchment paper
• Disposable piping bag lined with star nozzle

Ingredients

For The Sponge Cake:

• 175 g unsalted butter softened
• 175 g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• 175 g self raising flour sieved

For The Buttercream:

• 80 g unsalted butter softened
• 250 g icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• a touch of yellow gel food colouring
• 2 tbsp chocolate sprinkles or choc chip

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180c.  Line the sandwich tins with circles of baking parchment paper and spray the edges with baking spray if using.
• In a large bowl, cream the fat and sugar until extremely soft and fluffy. You can use a hand mixer, stand mixer or do it by hand.
• One by one beat in the eggs and lemon extract. Beat in the flour until smooth but do not over mix.
• Decant the batter into the cake tins dividing equally. Bake in the middle of the oven for around 20 minutes until a skewer or cake tester comes out cleanly.
• Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. When the cakes are cool, use a serrated knife to level off the tops and make them flat. (You won’t need to bits so they can be eaten straight away!)
• Meanwhile make the yellow buttercream by beating together the softened butter and icing sugar. My preferred method to do this is in the food processor covered with a damp tea towel to stop icing sugar getting everywhere. Alternatively you can use a stand mixer or do it by hand.
• Use a dab of gel food colour to get the desired shade of yellow. Liquid food colour is fine for this but may make the icing runnier so add more icing sugar to compensate.
• Decant the icing into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.  Squeeze icing onto the bottom layer of the cake so that the crinkly icing can be seen at the edge. Turn the other sponge upside down and gently position on top.
• Pipe outward petals on top of the cake to create your sunflower. Pipe a spiral in the middle which you then cover with the sprinkles or chocolate chips. Transfer the cake to a pretty plate and serve!

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