Some of my recipe inspirations I get from groups that I follow on social media. One of them is a German group in which a lot of recipes from my home country are shared. The other day one of the ladies in this group cooked up a storm. She made homemade Goulash ( find my German beef goulash recipe here) with greens and dumplings from scratch. On top she baked an unbelievably tasty looking Zitronenkuchen – lemon cake. I knew right away that I wanted a slice and put it on my “to bake list”. The recipe for her lemon cake used more butter than I had on hand. Luckily that turned out to be just fine, since I substituted the butter for olive oil and adjusted the recipe to my liking and our altitude ( 6500 feet – almost 2000 m) . The lemon olive oil pound cake I created turned out fantastically. It is very moist and keeps well. One loaf was devoured by my teens immediately after they got home from school. The second lemon olive oil pound cake is stored in the freezer for later consumption.
I would highly recommend you trying this very easy to follow recipe of my lemon olive oil pound cake. Baked goods using oil usually turn out very nicely. Other recipes I have shared using oil include this spiced pumpkin bread or my lemon olive oil cornmeal cake.
Lemon Olive Oil Pound Cake | | Print |
- 1¾ cup ( 210 g) flour
- 1¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 5 large eggs
- 1 cup ( 200 g) sugar
- Finely grated zest of 6 lemons
- ⅔ cup ( 160 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 Tablespoons ( 45 ml) whole milk
- 1 Tablespoon ( 15 ml) fresh lemon juice
- 7 Tablespoons ( 100 g) unsalted butter, melted
- Preheat your oven to 350 F Convection.
- Grease two 8½ x 4½ - inch loaf pans. ( Mine were slightly bigger which resulted in flatter cakes and a slightly shorter baking time.)
- In a bowl mix flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
- Let's start a water bath using a medium saucepan with 2 inches of water. Bring the water to a boil.
- In a heat proof mixing bowl ( I used the metal bowl of my stand mixer) stir together eggs, sugar, and lemon zest.
- Set the egg mixture bowl over the simmering water and whisk it until it is warm to touch, about 2 minutes.
- Take the bowl of the heat and beet it on medium speed of your stand mixer until the mixture thickens and turns a very light yellow, about 6 minutes.
- In the meantime mix together oil, milk, and lemon juice.
- Once the egg mixtures is done turn the speed of the mixer on low and add the oil mixture until combined.
- Add flour mixture until just combined.
- Mix in the melted butter.
- Divide the batter evenly into the prepared loaf panes.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. MIne was done in 32 minutes ( bigger loaf pans). Yours could take 40 - 50 mins. Baking times may vary.
- Let cool cakes in the loaf pans for 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
Please use GMO free and organic ingredients for this recipe.
The recipe creation for this lemon olive oil pound cake was inspired by Marie.
Marie is one of the admins of the FB group “Hausmacher Gerichte”. Danke!

{ 2 comments }
It looks so beautiful and simple. I adore cooking with olive oil. It has a distinctive taste which I love. Yours looks like a perfect texture too.
This sounds so good, I have some olive oil lemon bars bookmarked to try, the combination is so appealing!
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