Skillet lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting/Photo byGin Lee

Skillet lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting

This is a simple country-style lemon-flavored cake that's baked in a cast-iron skillet. The cake can be left plain, glazed with lemon sugar syrup, sprinkled with sugar-free or traditional powdered sugar, or served with whipped cream. The choices are endless. Today, I chose to create a lemon cream cheese frosting to enhance the lemony flavor of the cake. This cake is delightfully delicious, and it's super moist.

The secret ingredient, or not so much a secret, is that I add one small box of lemon pudding mix to my cake batter. The pudding is added to the dry batter, and then mixed in with the rest of the cake ingredients.

Skillet lemon cake/Photo byGin Lee

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1-1/3 cups of Splenda or sugar
• 6 tablespoons of canola oil
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1 (3.4 ounce) box of lemon pudding mix
• 2 cups of self-rising flour
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice (1 lemon squeezed)
• Zest from a lemon (For more lemon flavor, add more lemon zest.)

Lemon cream cheese frosting ingredients:

• 2 cups of sugar-free powdered sugar or traditional powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 small package of cream cheese
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 2 to 4 tablespoons of milk, depending on how loose you want your frosting.

Cake instructions:

Sift 2 cups of self-rising flour twice and set it aside.

Crack two eggs into a mixing bowl and beat them until they become frothy and light yellow. Then add 1-1/3 cups of Splenda or sugar and beat the mixture until it becomes creamy.

Preparing the cake batter/Photo byGin Lee

Add 6 tablespoons of canola oil, 1/2 cup of milk, 2 cups of self-rising flour, 1 small box of (dry) lemon pudding mix, 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, the juice of 1 freshly squeezed lemon, and the zest from 1 lemon to the sweetened egg mixture and mix for three minutes.

Lightly grease a large 10-inch cast-iron skillet with canola oil or butter. Then lightly dust the skillet with flour, just as you would do for baking a cake in a regular cake pan.

Pouring the cake batter into a prepared cast-iron skillet/Photo byGin Lee

Pour the cake batter into your cast-iron skillet. Then transfer the skillet to the 375-degree oven. Bake for 35 minutes.

For less mess, you can also place parchment paper in your greased skillet, then grease the paper with butter and lightly dust the parchment paper with flour. Then pour the batter into the skillet and bake.

Do the toothpick test by poking it in the center of the cake. If the toothpick pulls out with no cake batter on it, then your cake is done. Remove the skillet from the oven and allow your lemon cake to cool.

Slice and serve your lemon cake plain, or frost it with lemon cream cheese frosting. My recipe for the frosting is below.

Preparing lemon cream cheese frosting/Photo byGin Lee

Lemon cream cheese frosting instructions:

The ingredients you'll need to make the lemon cream cheese frosting are: 2 cups of sugar-free powdered sugar or traditional powdered sugar, sifted, 1 small package of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 2 to 4 tablespoons of milk

In a bowl, beat the cream cheese until it becomes smooth enough to work with. Then add the 2 cups of sugar-free or traditional powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 2 to 4 tablespoons of milk, depending on how loose you want your frosting to be. Beat the frosting until it comes all together well. Then add the frosting to your skillet lemon cake using a spatula. Serve and enjoy!