Gluten-free Lemon Coconut Cake {dairy-free}
Gluten-free Lemon Cake with a hint of coconut is the spring and summer dessert that’s perfect for potlucks! Slices of this cake are perfect just the way they are – no ice cream needed!
Today I bring you a delicious lemon coconut bundt cake that is not only gluten-free, but dairy-free, tree-nut free and peanut-free also! You won’t miss any of that though, as this cake is full of lemon and coconut flavor, has the perfect cake crumb, and a sweet and tangy lemon icing you’ll want to lick off your plate! I think this will become your favorite gluten-free dairy-free lemon dessert!
You all know that I love baking for myself and my family, but I love baking for other people even more! Seeing the smiles on the faces of friends with food allergies or intolerances when they have one of my desserts is so rewarding!
I made this gluten-free lemon cake for our church potluck recently. In our small church family of about 200 people, there are several other people with celiac, several with gluten intolerances, and quite a few with allergies to dairy, nuts and/or peanuts.
I wanted to make something that they could all enjoy at the evening dessert potluck. This gluten-free dairy-free cake is also free of nuts and peanuts of course.
Notes about the ingredients and substitutions for this gluten-free lemon cake recipe:
- Since I needed to use a nut-free flour blend, I grabbed one of my favorite all-purpose gluten-free flour blends, gfJules. It has xanthan gum in it already, so the xanthan gum listed in the recipe is just for if you use a gluten-free flour blend that doesn’t have xanthan or guar gum in it already. Results with gluten-free all-purpose flour blends vary, but you should have good results with any good quality flour blend that is very fine and doesn’t contain bean flours. I can guarantee it’ll be great if you use gfJules though since that’s what I used!
- For the liquid in this recipe, I opted for canned coconut milk from Trader Joe’s. You could use any coconut milk, regular milk or nut milks in this recipe as well, if you aren’t dealing with those allergies.
- I used coconut oil to keep it dairy-free. You could also use organic vegetable shortening with good results. I have not yet tried this with other oils, but you can absolutely try!
- If you really love coconut, you might want to sprinkle shredded coconut on top of the cake to finish it off too!
- The lemon flavor in this cake is all natural – that is, you use actual lemon juice and lemon zest from fresh lemons. I do not recommend using any lemon extracts in place of actual lemon.
This gluten-free lemon bundt cake is made in a bundt pan. Since bundt pans come in such a variety of sizes, and also a variety of thicknesses of the metals, the baking time given is a range. Don’t rely so much on the time listed for baking, instead check for doneness in regular intervals with a toothpick.
Thanks to the sweet and flavorful lemon glaze, slices of this are yummy served plain!
Here’s a look at how I brought it to a potluck. Since it was a potluck and I wanted to minimize the risk of cross-contamination during serving, I brought the cake already pre-sliced and ready to serve from this two-tiered serving plate. Each person could just grab their slice and enjoy!
One of the families from church eats all gluten-free and dairy-free, and since they enjoyed the cake I sent the few remaining slices home with them. Thankfully, I’d kept another a few slices at home for my family too!
At home, since we can have dairy, we enjoyed some cake slices with homemade whipped cream. I recently found this black raspberry ice cream and think the flavor would go amazing with this lemon cake!
Hope you can make this lemon coconut cake recipe soon! I think you’ll love it even more than a gluten-free coconut cake!
Have more lemons to use up? Another dairy-free option is my gluten-free lemon cookies. These paleo lemon tarts sure look great!
If you can have dairy, make sure you make these gluten-free lemon brownies. And try my gluten-free lemon cupcakes. These gluten-free lemon no-bake pies look delish too!
If you make this cake and love it, please come back and give this recipe a 5 star rating in the recipe card! Feel free to comment with tips or to share any successful substitutions you made.
Gluten-free Lemon Coconut Cake Recipe:
Gluten-free Lemon Coconut Cake {dairy-free}
This gluten-free lemon cake is a delicious choice to slice and bring to a party or potluck!
Ingredients
Cake:
- 2 1/4 cups (294 g.) gluten-free flour blend*
- 1 tsp. xanthan *see note
- 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 Tbsp. lemon zest
- 2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. lemon juice
- 1 1/4 cups coconut milk (I used Trader Joe's light coconut milk that comes in a can)
- 10 Tbsp. coconut oil
Lemon Glaze:
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 3-5 Tbsp. lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a bundt pan very well, then set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together gluten-free flour, xanthan or guar gum (if needed), baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs on medium for one minute.
- With mixer on low speed, slowly add sugar to the eggs. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy.
- Stir in vanilla, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
- Slowly pour in dry ingredients on low speed and mix just until combined.
- In a small saucepan, over medium heat, warm the coconut milk and coconut oil while whisking, until the oil is melted and mixture is well mixed.
- Pour the coconut milk/oil mixture into the batter in the mixing bowl. Mix on low speed until you have a smooth, thin batter.
- Pour batter into the greased bundt pan and bake at 350° until a toothpick inserted into the center should come out with only moist crumbs, not wet batter. Baking time will vary depending on your bundt pan's shape and size and can be anywhere from 35 minutes to 60 minutes or so, based on comments from others that have tested this. Rely on the toothpick!
- Remove cake from oven and allow to cool in pan, over wire rack for 5 minutes. Use a long skinny spatula or butter knife to gently help release the sides of the cake so it doesn't stick to the pan. Flip cake pan over, removing cake from pan onto wire rack. Allow cake to cool until room temperature or slightly warm.
- While cake is cooling, prepare lemon glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and fresh lemon juice until it reaches your desired thickness for glazing the cake. I made mine pretty thin and it soaked more into the cake, which I liked. If you want it to mostly stay on the top of the cake, you'll want to make it thicker so it won't run down the sides of the cake and onto the pan. When I made this again for new photos, I actually double-glazed it. I poured the glaze over the cake once. Then after that soaked in, I poured the rest over the cake again.
Notes
*I've tested with gfJules gluten-free flour blend and King Arthur Measure for Measure Flour Blend and recommend either. See blog post for more information.
*If the gluten-free flour blend you use already has xanthan gum or guar gum in it, then omit the xanthan gum called for in this recipe. (both the blends I tested this with have xanthan, so I did not add the additional xanthan listed here. It is listed in case you are using a blend that does not have xanthan)
*Since bundt pans come in such a variety of sizes, and also a variety of thicknesses of the metals, the baking time given is a range. Don't rely so much on the time listed for baking, instead check for doneness in regular intervals with a toothpick.
I hope you and your family and friends enjoy this gf lemon cake recipe.
I appreciate your kind response. I’m thinking it might be the coconut oil. I converted measurement to 1/2 cup plus 2 tbl. And I used a solid virgin oil. my bundt pan from pampered chef is regular size and not too small but the batter filled it to within 1/2 ” of rim so I knew I had a problem but kept going until I heard it spilling over. I definitely want to try again if I can come to terms with what I did wrong. Thanks for your help,
I don’t understand what happened. I followed recipe exactly and the batter poured out of the pan like lava and ended up a big mess.
Audrey, I’m so sorry this happened. While many have had success with this recipe, several, including you have had it epically fail. That’s so frustrating. I wanted you to know I have a couple blogger friends testing this recipe for me to help see if I’ve made an error, or what might be the problem here. My hunch is that it is variations in canned coconut milk and also a variation in bundt pan sizes. But we’ll see!
I made this cake and followed the recipe except I used Bob’s Red Mill 1 for 1 baking flour. I had to increase my baking time by 20 to 25 minutes. Oh I also buttered and sugared my Bundt cake pan. I’m gluten free, not vegan. The cake was perfectly delicious. I don’t know why there was such a difference in bake time, but I would suggest to others to not worry about increasing the time if needed.
Evryone in my family loved this cake! More like a pound cake, but still delicious. Needed to add about 8 minutes to cook time.
What a treat to have a birthday cake for my daughter, that is gluten and dairy free and does not taste like sawdust! Pure delicious!
Awesome GF/DF Cake. Made it in two 9 inch round pans and came out amazing. I would 1.5 X the recipe next time for that amount as I was a little short on batter. I baked at 350 for 30 min. and it is PERFECT. Moist and light texture with perfect Lemon taste (Glaze is where it packs its tangy punch). Would give even to my food snob friends. Two thumbs WAY up.
We are dairy free, not gluten free…can I use this recipe and use regular all-purpose flour instead of the gluten free flour and xantham?
Nikki, While I haven’t made it that way, I would think it should work fine. You’d just have to give it a try to see!
I came across this recipe last Easter and served it to my extended family, most of whom don’t need to eat gluten and dairy free like I do. They all raved over it. My sister even asked for the recipe and has made it many more times herself,
I think the recipe is perfect as is, we had no trouble at all with it.
Thank you so much!
I made this with about 1/5 coconut flour and 1/4 almond flour. I added a bit of lemon extract and about an extra half or three-quarter teaspoon of lemon juice. I also went light on the coconut oil by 1 to 2 tablespoons. I only included one and a half cups of sugar. I greased AND floured the pan. It probably needed a full 15 extra minutes of bake time.
It was delicious! It popped right out of the pan texture was perfect, it was moist and had great lemon flavor. We served it with some sliced strawberries and people were going crazy– those who eat gluten and those who don’t.
This cake was amazing baked beautifully. Nice tall fluffy but slightly chewy texture. The only thing I would change is add lemon oil for a little more lemon taste couldn’t taste lemon in original recipe. This is going to be my go to recipe for sure. Thank you
Jusy an FYI, I used my pampered chef stonrware fluted pan and had to add 10 min to my baking time and so I added 10 min to my cooling time since the stone stays so hot…worked like a charm!!! Love this recipe…I am a total lemonaholic and this is great to serve when my daughter, who is gf, and her family is over. A win win!!!
I just wanted to say that I stumbled upon your blog on Pinterest and I tried this recipe and absolutely loved it! I have a younger sister who has trouble with both gluten and dairy and the transition hasn’t been easy for my family. But I made this cake and everyone loved it! You definitely could not tell it was GF and DF. I will be checking out more of your recipes! Keep doing what your doing!
I made this Lemon Bundt Cake for our Easter Dinner this past weekend and it was DELICIOUS! The cake was moist, perfectly sweet, and had the perfect balance of lemon. The icing is where the lemon really packs a punch. WOW! I loved opening my cake carrier because the sweet citrus wafted up to my nose.
The bundt cake got rave reviews from all my gluten/dairy eating family!
I made the Lemon Coconut cake on the weekend. It’s so delicious. Will make another next weekend.
This sounds so yum and such a refreshing cake. Can I bake this in a 8″ (20cm) round pan or do all gluten free cakes work better as a bundt cake?
Thank you for such lovely photos and for recipe. I live in the UK and Inwonderednif it would be possible for you to convert the amounts from cups to grammes or lbs and ounces Please? The conversion sites all vary here!!!,
Thank you
Maggie
Made this weekend! Everyone loved it. It came out much more dense than I expected. More like a heavy pound cake. Not sure if I over mixed adding the flour or not. I will try blending the flour by hand next time and see if it makes a difference. Everyone wants it again and it was delicious.
Sorry! Five stars for sure!
Michelle, your cake looks perfect, very nice and moist! I really like the taste of coconut in baking, a good thing because I’m dairy free too and I prefer using coconut milk to other milks. You’re very kind to bring it for your church family, I know they appreciate it! My husband is a pastor in a larger church and one of the other pastors wives is also gluten free, there are also several other people who have Celiac or are gluten free for other reasons. I’ve been blessed by the folks at church looking out for me, they are very accommodating of my diet.
ooh this looks perfect Michelle! And I love that it’s also dairy free. We are eliminating dairy from Kelsey’s diet right now and her doctor wants to rule out lactose intolerance first so this would be a great dessert to start with!
Excuse me while I drool all over my keyboard! Why, oh why don’t we live closer!?? You know what I would do if someone brought this to one of our church functions!? Don’t know if it would be a cartwheel or some sort of embarrassingly goofy happy dance! There are only two other families at our church who are gluten free, so I bring GF and DF dishes I can eat (and everyone eats and enjoys too), but no one else really brings anything I can enjoy. I’d be helping myself to more than a few pieces of this beauty, I can tell you that for sure!
Thanks for another great recipe, Michelle!
~jules