Lemon Honey Apricot Cake Recipe

This recipe combines light lemon cake layers, a smooth honey Swiss meringue buttercream, and a sweet-tart apricot jam filling for a truly delightful experience. It’s a perfect cake for any celebration or just to brighten your day.

• Author: Tessa Huff
• Category: Layer Cake
• Rating: 5 out of 5 stars (based on 1 review)

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Ingredients

For the Lemon Cake:

• 1 ½ cups cake flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 ¾ cup sugar
• Zest of one lemon
• 3 eggs
• 1 egg white
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup lemon juice

For the Honey Buttercream:

• 6 egg whites
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups unsalted butter, softened
• ½ to ⅔ cup honey, or to taste
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the Assembly:

• ¾ to 1 cup apricot jam
• Soft gel paste food color (optional, for decoration)

Instructions

Make the Lemon Cake:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C). Grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans, then set aside. This ensures your cakes release easily and bake beautifully.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together the cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sifting helps to aerate the dry ingredients and prevent lumps, leading to a lighter cake. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened unsalted butter and cream cheese on medium speed until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Gradually add in the sugar and lemon zest, continuing to mix for 3 to 5 minutes until the mixture is light, fluffy, and pale in color. This creaming process incorporates air, which is vital for a tender cake. With the mixer on medium-low speed, add in the eggs and egg white, one at a time, ensuring each is fully incorporated before adding the next. Stir in the vanilla extract. Stop the mixer and use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, ensuring all ingredients are well combined.
4. With the mixer on low speed, carefully add half of the sifted dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mix until just incorporated. Once combined, slowly stream in the milk, followed by the lemon juice, mixing until just combined. Add the remaining dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth and no streaks of flour remain. Be careful not to overmix the batter at this stage; overmixing can develop gluten, resulting in a tough cake. Mix on medium speed for no more than 30 seconds after the last of the dry ingredients are incorporated.
5. Evenly distribute the cake batter into the two prepared 8-inch cake pans. Bake for 28 to 34 minutes, or until a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean. The cakes should be lightly golden and spring back when gently pressed. Cool the cakes on a wire rack for 10 to 20 minutes before carefully inverting them to remove them from their pans. Allow them to cool completely on the wire rack before assembling.

Make the Honey Buttercream (Swiss Meringue Buttercream):

1. In the clean, heatproof bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg whites and sugar. Whisk by hand until they are just combined.
2. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (creating a double-boiler), ensuring the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Whisking constantly to prevent the eggs from scrambling, heat the egg mixture until it registers 160 degrees F (71 C) on a candy thermometer. This pasteurization step is crucial for food safety and dissolves the sugar. Carefully remove the bowl from the heat and transfer it to the stand mixer.
3. Using the whisk attachment, beat the egg white mixture on high speed for 8 to 10 minutes. Continue beating until the meringue is thick, glossy, and holds stiff peaks, and the bowl is no longer warm to the touch. This creates a stable meringue base for your buttercream.
4. Switch from the whisk attachment to the paddle attachment. With the mixer on medium-low speed, gradually add in the softened unsalted butter, a few tablespoons at a time, mixing until each addition is fully incorporated. The mixture may look curdled or soupy at some point, but don’t worry – continue mixing. Add in the vanilla extract. Once all the butter is added, increase the mixer speed to medium-high and continue to mix until the buttercream becomes silky smooth and light.
5. Add the honey to the buttercream and mix until well combined. If at any point the buttercream appears curdled, simply continue mixing on medium-high speed; it will eventually come together. If the buttercream seems too soupy, place the bowl in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to chill the butter slightly, then return it to the mixer and beat again until smooth and firm.

Assemble the Cake:

1. Once the cake layers have completely cooled, use a long, serrated knife to carefully slice each cake horizontally in half, creating four layers in total. Place one cake layer on a cake board or your desired serving dish. Spread about ¾ cup of the honey buttercream evenly over this layer. Using the back of a large spoon, slightly hollow out the center of the buttercream, creating a shallow “bowl.” Fill this buttercream “bowl” with about ¼ to 1/3 cup of apricot jam. Top with the next cake layer and repeat the process with the remaining layers, ensuring even distribution of buttercream and jam.
2. Apply a thin layer of buttercream all over the entire cake – this is known as a crumb coat. The crumb coat traps any loose crumbs, creating a smooth canvas for your final frosting layer. Chill the cake in the refrigerator for about 15-20 minutes to set the crumb coat. Once set, frost the cake smoothly with the remaining honey buttercream.
3. To achieve the beautiful watercolor finish pictured, reserve about 1 cup of the remaining buttercream. Tint this reserved buttercream with your desired soft gel paste food colors; soft pink and pale golden yellow work wonderfully to complement the cake’s flavors. Frost the cake as you normally would, aiming for a relatively smooth finish. Just before the cake is perfectly smooth, dab several small spots of the tinted buttercream colors all around the sides and top of the cake. As you continue to gently smooth the cake with your offset spatula or bench scraper, the colors will begin to subtly blend together, creating an artistic watercolor effect. Add more colored buttercream as needed, remembering that the more you smooth, the more blended and diffused the colors will become.
4. Finish decorating the cake by piping fluffy shell borders around the top and bottom edges using a medium-large star tip, such as a Wilton 1B. This adds an elegant and polished touch to your beautiful Lemon Honey Apricot Cake.