This Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake is an easy sourdough discard cake uses edible lavender, fresh lemons, and is topped with a sweet glaze! Pair this cake with afternoon tea for a delicious sweet treat.
If you love bundt cakes as much as I do, check out my Strawberry Donut Pound Cake, Toasted Coconut Bundt Cake, or my Lemon Poppy Seed Bundt Cake.
This easy sourdough discard cake is another collab with my baking bestie Hannah from Make It Dough, who has inspired me to bake more with sourdough! Our monthly collabs have been so incredibly fun, plus it gives these recipes extra love as you have that much more testing and thought put into each one! Some of my other faves that I’ve created with Hannah are my Sourdough Carrot Snack Cake and Lemon Rosemary Sourdough, check them out!
Why You'll Love This Recipe
You will love this easy sourdough discard cake because it’s a very simple lavender and lemon cake, but it makes a big splash because it just looks so beautiful! That is why I love bundt cakes, I feel they are very impressive for little effort, and this Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake is exactly that!
I infuse the milk with lavender by allowing it to steep, like you would tea. If you don’t have fresh lavender, but you have organic lavender tea, you could also use that here too! I think when baking or cooking with lavender, it has to be very subtle in order to be good, and this cake strikes the perfect balance of floral lavender and zesty lemon.
How to Make Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350°F. To make the batter: Add the milk and lavender to a small saucepan. Heat until the temperature is 140 degrees on a drink thermometer. Allow to steep for 5 to 10 minutes. Strain the lavender out of the milk and discard. Set the milk aside.
Step 2
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add cane sugar and lemon zest. Mix for 3 to 4 rotations until the zest is combined into the sugar. Add the butter and mix on low until combined and there are no butter chunks. Add the eggs and sourdough discard to the butter mixture and mix on low until combined.
Add the cake flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and sea salt in that order. Mix on low while slowly adding the milk until all the milk is completely combined and you have a smooth batter.
Step 3
Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden brown. Allow to cool completely in the pan. Check out my article How to Remove Cakes Perfectly for tips on removing your bundt cake without problems!
Step 4
To make the glaze: In a medium bowl, add the powdered sugar and lemon juice and whisk until combined into a smooth glaze. Pour the glaze over the top of the cake. Sprinkle lavender on top (or just on one side) if you want extra lavender flavor!
Tips for Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake
• Make sure your butter is soft. I like to leave butter out on the counter overnight or hours before baking to allow it to soften naturally. If you must microwave it, do not do more than 10 seconds per 1/2 cup, even if you have to do multiple intervals this way. But, doing it this way ensures you do not melt pockets of your butter.
• Make sure your eggs are room temperature. Whenever making butter cakes, or cakes with coconut oil – think any cake that has a fat that can solidify. Canola oil, for example, won’t solidify, so it doesn’t matter if other ingredients are cold. But, in the case of this cake, butter can solidify, so whenever adding cold eggs (or milk) to soft butter that has been creamed, you can seize the butter. This is why room temperature eggs are very important here.
• Make sure you grease your bundt pan very well! Bundt cakes can be tricky to remove, but if you grease your pan well and give removal the time and patience it deserves, you will have a perfect bundt cake every time. I always prefer using a canola oil cooking spray to grease bundt pans. The spray allows grease to get into every single nook and cranny a lot easier than adding oil with your hands or a paper towel. The trick is to spray your bundt pan right before you are about to put the batter in. Do not spray it ahead of time and let it sit, this will allow the grease to sink and pool at the botrom, which we don’t want! Spray it very well, make sure it gets into all crevices and then immediately add your batter. If you do not have canola oil cooking spray, you can use canola oil, but yours fingers/hands and get it into each crevice. If you have extra canola oil, wipe it out with a paper towel or drain it off.
• Bundt cakes are tricky to remove from their pans sometimes. I always advise baking bundt cakes the night before, allowing them to cool completely in the pan overnight, no need to cover it. Then the following day, remove it from the pan and glaze them. You can read about How to Remove Cakes Perfectly in my post. But, I’ll also share here. For bundt cakes, the best way is to heat your oven to 250°F and put your cooled cake in the oven for 3 to 5 minutes. When you remove it, your cake should pop out really easily! The second way is to turn on your stovetop to low, add a cookie sheet on top of the burner and put the bundt cake on top of the cookie sheet. This will help heat the bottom of the bundt cake and loosen it enough to pop right out when you turn it upside down. This method is not as good as the first for bundt cakes because there is so much surface area that holds onto the cake (such as the sides), which is why I love the oven trick best specifically for bundts.
• The glaze may seem thick at first, but if you don’t want it to run off the cake completely, then this is what you want! I prefer a thicker glaze, so you see that drip down the cake, and I like th way it tastes. But, if you want a thinner glaze you can add more lemon juice or milk, but just beware it may run off your cake.
• If you like a more sweet lemon flavor then use milk in your glaze (as opposed to lemon juice) and add the lemon flavor. I prefer my lemon more sweet than tart, so this is what I do! But, if you like more tart, then use lemon juice and skip the lemon flavor, as lemon juice is naturally more tart. This gives this cake two ways to be made!
• If you want more lavender flavor, you can sprinkle the top of the glaze with lavender too. I did this on half of the cake, that way if some people wanted more lavender, they could eat those pieces, and the others are a bit more subtle.
• If you want to add candied lemons to the top, like Hannah decided to do, use my recipe for Candied Lemons!
• Make sure to store your cake in an airtight container once it’s finished. My favorite option for this is a cake dome! But, you can also use a Tupperware if need be.
Ingredients for Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake
Costco Kirkland Organic Cane Sugar
Organic Lemons
Organic Sourdough Discard
Cairnspring Mills Organic All Purpose Flour
Florida Crystals Organic Powdered Sugar
Frontier Co-Op Organic Lemon Flavor
FAQ's
What if I don’t have sourdough discard, can I still make this cake?
Yes! If you don’t have sourdough discard and you still want to make this cake, you can use a mix of 28 grams organic all purpose flour and 28 grams water. This creates the same texture and weight as the sourdough discard that is being used, it just won’t have that sourdough flavor. But, it will still be delicious!
Can I use a hand mixer for this recipe?
Yes, you can use a hand mixer instead of a stand mixer. Hannah provides more detailed instructions for hand mixing on her post.
What if I don’t have fresh lavender?
If you don’t have fresh lavender, you can use a lavender tea in its place. You can use 1 to 2 tea bags, as the tea may not be as strong as the fresh lavender.
What if I want more lemon flavor?
If you want even more lemon flavor I would advise adding the lemon flavor into the glaze. This will give a more true and sweet lemon flavor, versus a tart lemon flavor of the lemon juice. You can also use the lemon juice and lemon flavor if you want even more sweet and tart lemon flavor!
How should I store bundt cake?
This Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake should be stored in an airtight container. I prefer storing it in a cake dome, a that is best! But if you must use Tupperware, you can also do that!
Why Organic
Why use organic ingredients in this recipe? You all know I’m a huge organic advocate, and I bet you may be thinking sometimes, Why would I even bother to use organic ingredients in something that is so sweet and indulgent? But, that is the exact reason why you should use organic ingredients! Sweet things need to have flavor in order to be good, otherwise they are just sweet and they don’t taste like much else. Organic ingredients are more pure than conventional ones, therefore they actually have more flavor than the non organic options. Say it with me, organic means more flavor! And not just more flavor but a more true and pure flavor. And organic ingredients are much healthier for you to eat in general as they do not contain GMOs or anything artificial. Plus, you are being environmentally friendly when you choose organic ingredients!
So, I highly recommend that you buy the best organic ingredients for this recipe! You can also shop my Amazon Storefront for all my favorite organic ingredients here. Tip – hover over each ingredient to see the name. And if you want to learn more about organic foods and the difference, read my post here on Food Labels and What They Mean.
This Sourdough Lavender Lemon Bundt Cake is an easy sourdough discard cake uses edible lavender, fresh lemons, and is topped with a sweet glaze!
Ingredients
- Batter
1 cup organic milk
2 teaspoons organic lavender
340 grams (1 1/2 cups) organic cane sugar
1 organic lemon, zested
1 cup (226 grams) organic salted butter, softened
3 organic large eggs, room temperature
57 grams (1/4 cup) sourdough discard
189 grams (1 1/3 cups) organic cake flour
160 grams (1 1/4 cups) organic all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
Organic canola oil cooking spray
- Glaze
284 grams organic powdered sugar, sifted
2 to 3 organic lemon juice or milk
1 teaspoon organic lemon flavor (if using milk)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- To make the batter: Add the milk and lavender to a small saucepan. Heat until the temperature is 140 degrees on a drink thermometer. Allow to steep for 5 to 10 minutes. Strain the lavender out of the milk and discard. Set the milk aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add cane sugar and lemon zest. Mix for 3 to 4 rotations until the zest is combined into the sugar. Add the butter and mix on low until combined and there are no butter chunks.
- Add the eggs and sourdough discard to the butter mixture and mix on low until combined.
- Add the cake flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and sea salt in that order. Mix on low while slowly adding the milk until all the milk is completely combined and you have a smooth batter.
- Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden brown. Allow to cool completely in the pan. Check out my article How to Remove Cakes Perfectly for tips on removing your bundt cake without problems!
- To make the glaze: In a medium bowl, add the powdered sugar and lemon juice and whisk until combined into a smooth glaze. Pour the glaze over the top of the cake. Sprinkle lavender on top (or just on one side) if you want extra lavender flavor!
- Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Recipe Video
Notes
- High Altitude – Bake at 350°F for 1 hour 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden brown.
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