This Lemon Truffle Cake is the perfect dessert for Easter. It’s a four-layer white cake with a creamy lemon filling. The “lemon truffle” consists of lemon curd with white chocolate and cream cheese mixed in.
Lemon Truffle Cake
This Lemon Truffle Cake is one of the most delicious lemon cake recipes I’ve ever eaten. All of those layers of lemon make this such a pretty and elegant cake, but it’s really not that difficult to make. Just follow the directions step-by-step, and you’ll have this beautiful cake to share with your guests!
How to Make a Lemon Truffle Cake
Start with the homemade vanilla cake recipe listed in the instructions below. Lemon cake would make this cake far too lemony, so vanilla it is!
Make the lemon truffle filling. Don’t skip this step. This filling is completely and totally addicting and amazing. You’ll want to dive in with a giant spoon!
Cut each of your baked cake layers in half so you have four layers. This is probably the trickiest part of the recipe because you want to try to get them fairly even. Just take your time and use a serrated knife. I use a large bread knife to do this. Then place one cake layer cut-side-up on your platter. I like to tuck some waxed paper underneath the edges of the cake so I can pull them out after it has been decorated. This will help you decorate it neatly and not get the frosting all over your platter. Spread the first cake layer with some of the filling.
Place a second cake layer on top and spread more filling.
Add layer number three and more truffle filling.
Place the last cake layer on top. This time with the cut-side facing down.
Spread lemon curd on top.
Spread the sides of the cake with sweetened whipped cream.
I promise it will get prettier!
Use a piping bag to pipe some whipped cream decoratively around the top and bottom edges. It doesn’t have to be perfect!
Give your cake plenty of time to chill in the refrigerator. Overnight is perfect.
Once given time to chill, all of the filling holds those cake layers together nicely, and it’s easy to slice.
It’s a totally rich and delicious slice of cake. Everyone will think it came from a bakery.
I recently tested this recipe by serving it to friends at a pre-Easter dinner party. It’s safe to say that we all absolutely loved it. The cake is very tender, and those layers of lemon truffle filling are incredible. If you’re making this cake ahead of time, I’d put together the layers & spread the lemon curd on top… then wait until a few hours before serving to pipe on the whipped cream. We had leftovers for a few days after the party, and the leftovers were just as delicious as the day it was served.
If you are looking for more Easter cake recipes, you might enjoy my one layer Carrot Cake, Meyer Lemon Cheesecake Cake or my Malted Mousse Cake.
Lemon Truffle Cake
Ingredients
CAKE:
- 2¼ cups all purpose flour
- 1⅔ cups granulated white sugar
- 1¼ cups milk
- ¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 3½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 large egg whites
LEMON TRUFFLE FILLING:
- ¾ cup granulated white sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup water
- 2 large egg yolks
- ⅓ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
- 6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
- 8 ounces cream cheese
WHIPPED CREAM FROSTING:
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
PREPARE THE CAKE:
- In a large bowl with an electric mixer, combine the flour, sugar, milk, butter, baking powder and salt. Blend until the butter is evenly mixed. Add the vanilla. Beat at low speed for 1 minute, then increase the speed to high and beat for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl constantly, beating until the mixture is light and fluffy.
- In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. Gently but thoroughly fold the whites into the cake batter. Pour evenly into the prepared pans.
- Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cakes are no longer jiggly in the center. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Split the cooled layers horizontally to make 4 layers in all. (I use a serrated knife… and gently saw around the center to cut even layers).
PREPARE THE FILLING:
- In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk in water until smooth. Cook over medium-high heat until the mixture comes to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to low and cook 2 minutes longer, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks with a fork. Slowly stir about ¼ cup of the hot mixture into the egg yolks, whisking quickly while adding the hot liquid. (You don’t want to create scrambled eggs, so be sure to add the hot mixture slowly, whisking it into the eggs as quickly as possible). Continue adding ¼ cup of the hot mixture to the eggs until you have warmed up the egg mixture. Whisk the egg yolk mixture back to the mixture in the saucepan. Cook over low heat until the mixture boils, whisking constantly, then continue to cook for 2 minutes, stirring.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice, butter and zest. Transfer half of the hot filling to a small bowl and set aside to cool. Add the white chocolate to the hot filling in the saucepan and stir until the chocolate is melted; set aside. In a small bowl, beat the cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in the white chocolate mixture until light and smooth. At this point, you should have a small bowl of lemon curd and a bowl of white chocolate truffle filling.
- Spread one third of the white chocolate filling over one layer of the cake. Top with a second cake layer, then spread with one third more of the filling; top with a third cake layer and spread the remaining filling over. Top with the last cake layer and spread reserved lemon curd. Refrigerate, uncovered, until the filling is set (2 to 3 hours).
MAKE THE WHIPPED CREAM:
- In another bowl, whip the cream and sweeten it with the powdered sugar. Frost the sides of the cake with half of the whipped cream frosting. Put the remaining frosting into a pastry bag and pipe decoratively around the top and bottom edge of the cake. Refrigerate up to 8 hours before serving.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Delicious, moist, cake. My family loved it. I added sliced strawberries on the second layer.
A tip/suggestion: NEVER worry about your icing or piping skills; I find that the worse I think they are, the *less intimidating* the cake is to people when it comes to cutting & eating it.
I used your filling recipe, however, I used a French vanilla box cake twerking it just a little. Everyone loved it. The lemon curd and mousse filling we’re absolutely delish and held the cake together great.
I don’t know what I did – I thought I followed the directions to a T – but the cake part was really dense. It didn’t raise very much in the oven. Any thoughts why? I thought with the egg whites it would have been fluffier. Other than that, the flavors were amazing and it was very pretty. 🙂
I’ve never had anything resembling this recipe, so to try something new would be interesting!
Simply delivious and beautiful. Definitely worth the effort. Thank you for sharing this recipe
This is such a great cake! I made this on Tuesday. It was just a lot of work. But I will make it again. No problems, it came out perfect.
I just made this cake for a baby shower! Everyone couldn’t stop talking about how tasty it was. I heard the word “amazing” over and over! The lemon flavour was just right and the truffle filling was divine (so divine I could have grabbed a spoon and eaten the whole bowl). For those of you commenting on using buttercream frosting instead of the whipping cream, I would stick with whipping cream. I think for this cake buttercream frosting would be way too sweet. The whipping cream really lets the lemon flavour shine! My cake sat out on a buffet table for a couple hours and the whipping cream held up fine! This is an awesome recipe! Thanks Lori!
Hi…I was wondering if anybody had considered making this in another flavor? I was thinking strawberry would be good but am worried about leaving out the lemon juice in the filling part of the recipe. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated…the recipe as is looks incredible too.
Hi! For my birthday this year I want to make a raspberry lemon truffle cake. I was just wondering if the filling would work to frost the outside of a cake or if it would be too soft? Also would it hold up if I was to pour a white chocolate ganache over the top? Thanks!