Easy gluten and dairy free lemon cake with blueberries

This delicious gluten-free cake is filled with lots of lemon flavor and juicy blue berries. The cake uses almond flour and coconut flour and is super moist and easy to make.

What do you need to make the lemon cake?

• almond flour
• coconut flour
• arrowroot (or substitute with tapioca flour)
• eggs
• blueberries
• maple syrup
• lemon

Optionally I have made a delicious frosting which I make with cashew nuts and coconut milk. You can leave that out if you want but I think it is a great addition. You can add extra ingredients such as vanilla extract. The frosting is made with coconut milk which has a distinct flavor. You can substitute this with rice milk or almond milk if you prefer. If you want the frosting to be a little bit thicker you can use coconut cream instead of milk.

Making the cake is pretty straightforward. It’s basically mixing all the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and adding the coconut oil at the last minute. To sweeten the cake batter I used maple syrup here but you can try to make this with coconut sugar if you prefer. I have to say I am not a big fan of coconut sugar. The flavor can be somewhat overpowering and I don’t think it works well in every recipe.

Tips for the best gluten free and dairy free cake

As there are no gluten in this cake it will be a little more fragile than your average cake with normal flour. Something to keep in mind when making the lemon cake. It is best to use parchment paper in the cake tin. I spray the cake tin with some olive oil, then wrinkle the parchment paper, spread it out again and press it into the cake tin. You can cut it exactly to size if you want, but I tend to just use it with wrinkles and all. For this recipe I used a regular 25 cm (about 10 inches) long cake tin but you can use any other cake pans you want. If you do use another size keep in mind that baking times may vary depending on the pan.

While I have given the measurements in cups, I would encourage you to start baking with a measuring scale as that always is much more accurate. I’m used to the metric system and I believe more and more people in the US start using metric as well for baking. A measuring cup is a handy tool but not too accurate.

Anyway, back to the cake at hand. It uses quite a lot of eggs, baking powder plus baking soda as a rising agent. For fat I used coconut oil but you can replace this with butter if you prefer. It kind of depends on what you want the cake to be. Dairy free obviously does not work with butter. In that case you could use a vegan butter if you want.

If you have a nut allergy you can substitute the almond flour with tiger nut flour or chufa flour. Cassava would probably work well too. I like chufa (tiger nut) a lot but not sure how readily available this would be in other parts of the world. I buy it online. It’s one of my favorite gluten-free flour types to bake with.

important for a cake without gluten is to let it cool before taking it out of the tin. I had it cool for about 30 minutes before lifting the lemon cake out of the tin to cool down further on a cake rack. The same goes for cutting the cake. Make sure it is cooled completely.

My blueberries are all sinking to the bottom of the tin. How to avoid that?

I haven’t found a really good way to prevent this from happening. I would suggest rolling them in a bit of coconut flour before adding them to the batter and make sure you use small blueberries. The bigger ones are heavier and will sink to the bottom sooner. I’ve had succes such as in the blueberry and yogurt cake but as you can see here they have all gone down too. It doesn’t make a difference in terms of flavor but it definitely looks prettier if they are divided around the cake. The type of batter and the texture of the cake will also make a huge difference.

Can I make the lemon cake in a standmixer?

Yes you can but it is so easy to make that using a standmixer is just unnecessary bowls to wash. Plus you don’t want to overmix the batter. If you do use a standmixer, put it on medium speed and for a very short time. Once it is mixed stop the machine.

Can I replace the blueberries?

You can definitely replace the blueberries in this lemon cake. It would also work very well with apples, pears or pieces of banana. Obviously the cake taste will be different with different fruits. You also replace the lemon with lime or even oranges.

How can I keep the cake and for how long?

You can keep the cake for a few days outside of the fridge in plastic wrap or aluminium foil. Or – what I like to do – is cut them in slices and make separate portions of two slices per freezer bag and store it in the freezer for later use.

What is the arrowroot used for?

Arrowroot is most commonly used as a binding agent for gluten free baking. It can be replaced by tapioca flour.

All in all this is a really delicious cake that can be changed to suit your specific needs. I will soon be sharing more delicious gluten-free cake recipes so stay tuned for that!