Mini Lemon Cake Recipe | Low Carb | One Dish Kitchen (2024)

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This low carb lemon cake recipe is perfect to use when you’re craving something sweet. Made with almond flour, it’s perfect for breakfast or an afternoon snack. This mini cake is buttery, lemony and incredibly delicious!

I’ve had this lemon cake recipe in my dessert recipe arsenal since the beginning of the summer. I intended to post the recipe much earlier, it just got pushed back on my calendar.

Even though I haven’t shared this cake recipe until now, I’ve certainly made this low carb dessert many, many times this summer and I’m so excited to share it with you today.

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Why I Love This Recipe

My daughter and son have gone KETO, both following not-so-strict versions of the Atkins diet as well as the KETO diet.

So, I’ve been modifying a few of my recipes to help them with with their food choices. Although main dish meals aren’t too hard to adapt into low carb versions, sometimes desserts can be tricky.

This lovely lemon cake recipe has been the most popular low carb cake recipe I’ve made here at my house. It’s gotten rave reviews by everyone.

This cake recipe is adapted from the “quarter” pound cake recipe from the Banana Upside Down Cake recipe posted a while back. It’s not a single-serving cake, meaning that you won’t want to eat it all at one sitting – although I won’t pass judgement if you do. This is a mini cake, enough to serve a few people.

If you are just cooking for yourself, enjoy it for a few days. This dessert is perfect to enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea in the morning and ideal as an afternoon snack.

My favorite low carb sugar substitute to use is Swerve sweetener. It is sweet and delicious and won’t leave you with any bitter aftertaste. Swerve also measures like sugar and has ZERO net carbs.

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Ingredient Notes

See recipe box below for ingredient amounts and full recipe instructions.

• Butter: Use softened butter, not cold butter in this lemon cake recipe. Softened butter should still be cool to the touch but when you press your finger into the butter, your finger will leave an indentation. The best way to soften your butter is to put it out on the kitchen counter for a half hour before you want to use it. Another way to quickly soften butter is to put the cold butter in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds. If you use this method, be sure to watch carefully – you don’t want the butter to melt at all.
• Sweetener: I recommend using Swerve sweetener.
• Egg: Use 1 large egg.
• Lemon juice: Use fresh or bottled lemon juice.
• Almond flour: I recommend using blanched almond flour or a superfine almond flour as it gives the cake a better texture.
• Baking powder: To give the cake a little lift.
• Almond milk: Use unsweetened almond milk to moisten the cake batter.

How To Make This Recipe

1. Beat butter and the sugar substitute together in a small bowl.
2. Beat in egg and lemon juice.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together almond flour, baking powder, and salt. Add this to the butter/Swerve mixture and stir to combine.
4. Stir in unsweetened almond milk.
5. Spread the batter into a small baking dish and bake for 40-45 minutes.

Easy and delicious, I think you’ll enjoy this lemon cake as much as we do.

Expert Tips

• If you’re not following a low carb diet, feel free to use all-purpose flour in place of the almond flour and replace the Swerve sweetener with sugar.
• I use a 9.5-inch baking dish with this cake recipe. For best results use a dish of similar size. For more information on the cooking and baking dishes I use in our “recipes for one”, please visit ourFAQ page. For examples of the dishes used at One Dish Kitchen, please visit ourStore page.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Other low carb recipes:

• Crustless Quiche Lorraine For One
• Slow Cooker Chicken Piccata For One
• Keto Fat Bombs – A Small Batch Recipe
• Ratatouille For One