Paleo Lemon Blueberry Cake

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Updated Mar 31, 2022

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Paleo Lemon Blueberry Cake is the perfect spring and summer cake recipe. It’s bright, lemony and covered in a heaping amount of fresh blueberries. Made from a blend of almond flour, tapioca flour and coconut flour plus a good amount of fresh lemon juice, this is a paleo cake recipe that’s sure to be a crowd pleaser.

I’ve been wanting to make a lemon blueberry cake for ages. There’s just something about the combination of lemon and blueberries that’s deliciously sweet and puts a smile on your face. It’s all the goodness of spring and summer rolled up into a cake and it’s perfect for Sunday brunch, afternoon tea and Mother’s Day.

But as you probably know, paleo baking is not without nuance. The ratio of the flours, wet ingredients and sweetener has to be just perfect for the right texture. If you followed the behind-the-scenes on my Instagram, you know that I attempted this cake four times (and made lots of little tweaks).

But good news – I’m incredibly happy with this final version and thrilled to share the recipe with you today!

Paleo Cake Ingredients

If you’re familiar with paleo baking (which is gluten-free and dairy-free) then the ingredients will be of no surprise to you. Like a lot of my baking recipes, I have a mix of almond flour, tapioca flour and coconut flour, which forms the bulk of the cake.

While taste testing this recipe I also tried out a few different sweeteners:

Maple Syrup: For the official recipe I decided to stick with maple syrup as this was the clear favorite among the taste testers. It really gave the cake a light and moderately sweet flavor.
Honey: An alternative is to use honey which can be swapped 1:1 with the maple syrup. Compared to the syrup, honey can make the cake texture a little more dense. But if you’re looking for a less sweet cake, honey will be the best alternative.
Monk fruit and Erythritol: For a low-carb and keto friendly sweetener you could use monk fruit or erythritol. However, since monk fruit is a dry ingredient, you’ll need adjust the ratio by either adding additional wet ingredients or minimizing a dry ingredient (I recommend doubling the coconut oil and reducing each of the flours a little).

Lastly, the cake, if you haven’t guessed has a lemon flavor and a delicious blueberry top. Blueberries are on my 8 Anti-Inflammatory Foods I Eat Every Week list and who said I couldn’t include them in a dessert to get my count for the week. *wink*

Which Lemons Should You Use?

I recommend using fresh lemon juice for this recipe, rather than bottled lemon juice. The flavor is much more vibrant and pronounced. If you can find Meyer lemons, those are great and they’re a little sweeter which is perfect for this cake.

How to Make Paleo Lemon Blueberry Cake

Because this cake has blueberries on top, I recommend using a springform pan. It’s much easier to release the cake after baking and you don’t have to worry about turning it upside down. Once you’ve got your pan ready you’ll need to go through the following steps:

Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl.
Add the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl. This step may seem like an evil plan to get you to wash more dishes, in reality though, a chemical reaction occurs once you mix the wet and dry ingredients together that helps the cake rise. It’s important to have the chemical reaction happen last right before the batter goes into the oven or else your baking may fall a little flat.
Mix both wet and dry ingredients together with a hand mixer. Once the batter is all mixed in pour it into your spring-form pan.
Add blueberries! I recommend adding 1/2 cup (or more, if you’d like) of blueberries after half of the batter has been poured. Then add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of blueberries on top and place the cake into the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

More Delicious Paleo Desserts You’ll Love

Want a variation of this in muffin form? Try my Paleo Blueberry Muffins. And if you’ve got an abundance of lemons, you might also love my Lavender Lemonade, Meyer Lemon Coconut Macaroons and Lemon Curd Thumbprint Cookies.

About the author

Lisa Bryan