Vegan Mini Lemon Sponge Cakes
These Vegan Mini Lemon Sponge Cakes are light and fluffy with a creamy buttercream and lemon curd filling. Get the recipe below.
Page Contents
Cake In Miniature Form
For street parties, buffets, picnics or afternoon tea; sometimes a big layer cake just won’t do. A cupcake is not sophisticated enough and so the miniature cake was born. These miniature cakes are tiny versions of the original. You could almost eat them in one bite!
vegan Lemon SpongeLemon sponge cake is one of my absolute favorites. It’s sweet but with just the right level of tartness from the fresh lemon. This comes in the form of lemon juice and zest! Making lemon sponge cakes in miniature form couldn’t be easier. For this recipe I use the creaming method: the fat and sugar are creamed well together, and then the wet ingredients (in the place of egg) are beaten into this mixture. Sifted flour and baking powder, our raising agent, and then folded in. It’s a classic technique to bake a classic cake.
How Do You Make Lemon Sponge Cakes?
We’ve already talked about the basic method for baking these cakes.
But, to make them lemony you will need lemon juice and lemon zest. Ordinarily in a vegan sponge recipe I would use apple cider vinegar to create a reaction with the baking powder. This is what creates air bubbles making the sponge lovely and bouncy. Instead of the vinegar and some of the plant milk in this recipe, I use lemon juice so we get the same light and fluffy cake but with a lemony flavour.
To make these Lemon Sponge Cakes in miniature form you will also need a special bit of kit: a 12 cup mini sandwich tin to be precise. These tins are not only the perfect size but they have loose bottoms so you can easily push the miniature cakes out.
You could use a muffin or cupcake tin as an alternative but they will be a little wider on top than they are on the bottom when you cut them in half which isn’t quite the look we are going for.
How Do You Make These Mini Sponge Cakes Vegan?
Vegan baking is surprisingly easy once you know how: just check out my big vegan baking guide here to learn all my tips and tricks.
The main ingredient that we are missing in cake recipes is eggs. Some recipes use a vegan egg replacer but I like to avoid these as they aren’t always easy to come by and every brand works slightly differently.
For the butter and milk it is much easier to just use plant based alternatives like margarine or soy milk, both of which are readily available in supermarkets.
Top Tips For Baking mini Cakes
- Don’t forget to pre-heat your oven, test the temperature with an oven thermometer before baking
- Make sure your ingredients are at room temperature
- Beat the butter and sugar well so that it is really creamy, the sugar shouldn’t still be grainy and visible
- Use soy milk as it is the plant milk most similar to cows milk
- To get an even amount of cake batter in each hole of the cake tin, use an ice cream scoop
- Wait until the cakes have cool completely before cutting them in half
- Don’t overfill the cakes with jam and buttercream, too much jam will cause the top to slide off
The Recipe
Vegan Mini Lemon Sponge Cakes
Equipment
- 27 x 36cm 12 Hole Mini Sandwich Tin with Loose Bases
- grease proof paper
- 2 piping bags
Ingredients
For the cake
- 150 grams vegan butter e.g. Flora or Naturli
- 200 grams caster sugar
- 300 grams self raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 200 ml plant milk e.g. soy milk or oat milk
- lemon zest from 1 lemon
- 100 ml lemon juice roughly 2 large lemons
For the filling
- 4 tbsp lemon curd
- 200 ml vegan whipping cream
To decorate
- 2 tbsp Icing sugar
Instructions
To make the cake
- Pre-heat your oven to 180C / 356F / gas 4.
- Cut out 12 small discs of grease proof paper and place in the bottom of your tins.
- Make sure all of your ingredients are weighed out and ready to go.
- In a large bowl, beat the non-dairy butter and caster sugar together until it is pale and creamy.
- In a separate jug, mix together the milk, and lemon juice. (Do not worry if the lemon juice reacts with the milk and it looks like it has split or curdled).
- Add half of the milk and lemon mix in with the creamed butter and sugar.
- Sift in half of the flour and baking powder and fold in along with the lemon zest.
- Stir in the remaining milk and lemon juice before folding in the remaining flour and baking powder.
- Spoon the cake batter into your cake tins (1 heaped tbsp – 2 tbsp per cake hole)
- Bake in the centre of the oven for 15-18 minutes or until the cakes are golden brown, a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes come out clean and the cake is springy to the touch.
- Remove the cakes from the oven once they are cooked and leave them in the tin until cool enough to handle.
- Push the cakes out using the loose bottoms tins and peel off the layer of grease proof paper.
- Let them finish cooling before cutting and decorating.
To make the filling
- While the cakes are cooling, whisk the vegan whipping cream until thick and holding its shape.
- Spoon this into your first piping bag.
- Next spoon the jam into a second piping bag.
To assemble
- Carefully cut the cakes in half horizontally.
- Pipe alternating blobs of cream and jam on top of the bottom layer.
- Sandwich the top piece of cake on top.
To decorate
- Simply dust with sifted icing sugar to finish.
Nutrition
More Cake Recipes
Vegan Mini Victoria Sponge Cakes
If you want more cake recipes just check out the archive.
What’s your favourite cake?