Keto Lemon Pound Cake
By Carine Claudepierre
Published on 07/15/2019 - Last updated on 10/26/2023
This recipe may contain Amazon or other affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Learn how to make this Keto Lemon Pound Cake! An easy coconut flour cake with a delicious buttery texture and tangy lemon flavor.
This delicious keto lemon bread contains only 3.9 grams of net carbs per slice, and it is a delicious treat to pair with a cup of my bulletproof coffee for breakfast.
Is Lemon Pound Cake Keto?
Classic Lemon Pound Cakes aren’t keto-friendly because they’re made with sugar and all-purpose flour. Two ingredients that are full of carbs.
But this Keto Lemon Pound Cake is very much keto-friendly.
It uses only keto-friendly ingredients such as almond flour and coconut flour, this keto pound cake has only 3.9 grams of net carbs per slice!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
There is no need to be on a keto diet to appreciate the moist and buttery texture of a keto lemon cake.
This cake is also:
- Gluten-Free
- Keto-Friendly
- Low-Carb
- Paleo
- Dairy-Free
How To Make This Keto Lemon Pound Cake
This lemon keto cake recipe has only a few ingredients and steps to follow.
It does not require fancy pieces of equipment or ingredients, and you will quickly make this recipe in 15 minutes of prep.
Ingredients
First, let’s have a look at what you need.
- Eggs – a delicious buttery and moist pound cake that has eggs. Please stick to the recipe and do not try to substitute eggs in this recipe.
- Almond Flour – you can also use almond meal if desired but ultra-fine almond flour is the best option. To learn more about keto flour, read my keto flour guide!
- Coconut Flour – as always in keto baking-uses fresh flour with no lumps for perfect results.
- Coconut Oil – or melted butter if preferred.
- Lemon Juice – fresh is the best if you can. Lemons are great keto-friendly fruits! If you don’t have a juicer, read my guide on how to juice a lemon without a juicer.
- Lemon Zest – this is optional. I recommend you use untreated organic lemon if you intend to use the zest. This avoids adding nasties to your cake. A few drops of the lemon extract also work!
- Sugar-Free Crystal Sweetener – as always I love to use a crystal blend of Monk Fruit sweetener and erythritol, but powdered erythritol or Xylitol also are great options. Check out my review of keto-friendly sweeteners to convert from one to another.
Making The Cake
Next, let’s talk about the most important part of this recipe: ingredient temperature.
While this is a very straightforward keto lemon pound cake recipe there is one trick!
You must use eggs at room temperature. In fact, baking with coconut oil involves using ingredients at room temperature.
The reason is pretty simple, coconut oil gets solid under 76°F (24°C).
It means that if your eggs are straight out of the fridge they will create lots of coconut oil lumps.
The best is to store your eggs out of the fridge the day before or at least 4 hours before making this recipe.
Otherwise, use melted butter instead of coconut oil. This will not happen with butter.
For more tips on never failing a keto recipe, have a look at my keto baking guide, I share in this ebook all my tips and secrets to never failing a recipe!
Storage Instructions
This keto lemon bread can be stored in the fridge for up to 4 days in an airtight container.
You can also freeze this almond flour pound cake. First, slice the whole cake into 16 slices. Then, freeze the keto lemon loaf into a zip-lock bag or in an airtight container.
Make sure the slices do not overlap, it makes it easier to defrost one by one.
Finally, defrost your slices the day before at room temperature.
The next day, toast the slices in the toaster if you like. Of course, if you freeze your sugar-free lemon cake with the frosting on top don’t bring it to the toaster.
Enjoy plain or spread some sugar-free jam on top.
Frequently Asked Questions
This is probably the healthiest coconut flour lemon cake recipe you will find around. Let me tell you why. First, it is sugar-free, low-carb, and dairy-free, yes eggs are not dairy.
Dairy products come from bovine animals only include milk, cream, butter, and cheese. So, this keto lemon bread is dairy-free meaning it is easy to digest.
Next, it is a high-protein cake perfect to serve at breakfast or for a fulfilling afternoon tea. Proteins keep you full for longer and you won’t feel hungry after one slice.
Finally, it is a gluten-free lemon cake high in fiber from coconut flour. Fibers are part of healthy gut health and stabilize blood sugar levels.
This keto lemon pound cake has only 3.9 grams of net carbs per slice.
More Keto Baking Recipes
We all love a good piece of cake and I have plenty of other delicious keto cake recipes for you to try.
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Keto Lemon Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 5 large Eggs at room temperature
- ¾ cup Granulated Sweetener or xylitol
- ½ cup Coconut Oil or melted butter
- 2 cups Almond Flour
- ¼ cup Coconut Flour
- 1 tablespoon Baking Powder
- ¼ cup Lemon Juice
- ½ tablespoon Lemon Zest optional
Lemon glazing
- 1 cup Powdered Erythritol
- 2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a 9-inch x 5-inch loaf pan with a piece of parchment paper. Slightly oil the paper to make sure the pound cake doesn't stick to the pan. Set aside.
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar-free crystal sweetener, melted coconut oil (or butter), and lemon juice. Ensure that your coconut oil is not burning hot, or it will 'cook' the eggs and create lumps. All your ingredients must be roughly at the same temperature, think room temperature, especially the eggs and lemon juice. Cold ingredients just out of the fridge will solidify the coconut oil creating oil lumps. Otherwise, use melted butter to prevent this to happens. Set aside.
- In a different large mixing bowl, whisk together the almond flour, coconut flour, and baking powder. Stir to combine the flours evenly.
- Pour the liquid ingredients onto the dry ingredients.
- Stir all the ingredients together with a baking spoon until it forms a thick cake batter with no lumps. Combine for at least 2 minutes to make sure the coconut flour fiber absorbs the moisture.
- Transfer the cake batter onto the loaf pan. Make sure you are using the same loaf pan size, or it will impact your baking time.
- Place the loaf pan in the center of your oven and bake at 180°C (350°F), fan-forced mode, if you can, for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, decrease the temperature to 160°C (320°F) and cover the loaf pan with a loose piece of foil. This will prevent the top from burning, and the middle will bake slowly. Keep baking for 45-60 minutes in total, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the pound cake comes out with little to no crumbs on it.
- Cool for 10 minutes in the loaf pan, then lift out the pound cake from the pan using the parchment paper.
- Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. It is a thick cake, and it usually takes 3 hours to fully cool. Be patient and add the lemon glazing on the cake when it reaches room temperature, not before!
Lemon glazing
- To make the lemon glazing, whisk together the sugar-free powdered erythritol with lemon juice until no lumps remain. If needed, add more lemon juice to get a thinner glazing or more powdered sweetener to get thicker glazing.
- Drizzle over the cooled pound cake.
- You can place the cake for a few minutes in the freezer to set the glazing if too runny.
- Store your cake in the pantry on a cake box for up to 3 or 4 days. Slice before serving to keep the cake moist.
- Enjoy as breakfast, teatime, plain, or with sugar-free chia seed jam.
How to freeze your pound cake?
- Slice the cake into 16 slices before freezing. Freeze the cake in an airtight box, making sure the slice doesn't overlap, or place a piece of parchment paper between each slice to make it easier to defrost individually. Defrost the slice the day before at room temperature, on a plate, don't overlap the slices.
- The next day, you can toast the slices in a toaster before serving.
Tools
Getting Started What Is Keto? Macro Calculator Sweetener Converter Meal Plans Recipe Ebooks Intermittent Fasting Keto Fruits Keto Vegetables Keto Flours Fighting Keto Flu Healthy SweetenersWant My Kitchen Equipment?
About The Author
Hi, I'm Carine, the food blogger, author, recipe developer, published author of a cookbook and many ebooks, and founder of Sweet As Honey.
I have an Accredited Certificate in Nutrition and Wellness obtained in 2014 from Well College Global (formerly Cadence Health). I'm passionate about sharing all my easy and tasty recipes that are both delicious and healthy. My expertise in the field comes from my background in chemistry and years of following a keto low-carb diet. But I'm also well versed in vegetarian and vegan cooking since my husband is vegan.
I now eat a more balanced diet where I alternate between keto and a Mediterranean Diet
Cooking and Baking is my true passion. In fact, I only share a small portion of my recipes on Sweet As Honey. Most of them are eaten by my husband and my two kids before I have time to take any pictures!
All my recipes are at least triple tested to make sure they work and I take pride in keeping them as accurate as possible.
Browse all my recipes with my Recipe Index.
I hope that you too find the recipes you love on Sweet As Honey!
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Disclaimer
The recipes, instructions, and articles on this website should not be taken or used as medical advice. You must consult with your doctor before starting on a keto or low-carb diet. The nutritional data provided on Sweetashoney is to be used as indicative only.
The nutrition data is calculated using WP Recipe Maker. Net Carbs is calculated by removing the fiber and some sweeteners from the total Carbohydrates. As an example, a recipe with 10 grams of Carbs per 100 grams that contains 3 grams of erythritol and 5 grams of fiber will have a net carbs content of 2 grams. Some sweeteners are excluded because they are not metabolized.
You should always calculate the nutritional data yourself instead of relying on Sweetashoney's data. Sweetashoney and its recipes and articles are not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose, or treat any disease. Sweetashoney cannot be liable for adverse reactions or any other outcome resulting from the use of recipes or advice found on the Website.
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Thank you for your recipe.
I made cupcakes instead of a loaf cake as they bake faster and easier to portion.
Baked it at 180c for 10 mins then 160c for another 15 mins and they were done.
I did read a comment saying they won’t rise but they did rise with me as other keto cupcakes. I used erythritol and butter.
So yummy. I found the cupcake needed more lemon flavour so I made the drizzle 1:1 ratio lemon juice and powdered erythritol and it fixed it. Seemed runny but it solidified within seconds after drizzling.
Next, I’ll try your orange version.
My question is, why is 1 slice of your lemon cake contains 3.9 carb while orange contains 3.2? I thought orange juice would have more carb than lemon and all the rest of ingredients are identical
Is it possible to use the same recipe and instead putting them in Cup cakes tray?
Sure, but they will be quite flat and dense since it’s not a cupcake recipe. Instead try my keto lemon cupcake recipe here. Enjoy! XOXO Carine
Thank you !!! I make!!! super cake !!!
I’m disappointed, it just doesn’t taste right to me. I’m not sure what the problem is. I only used 1/2 a cup of monk fruit sweetener because I thought it would be too sweet otherwise, so maybe this was the problem. Maybe I just don’t like the taste of monk fruit. I noticed the recipe didn’t call for salt, so maybe that’s it. Other than the off taste, it seems perfect.
The recipe is not using pure monk fruit but erythritol. Pure monk fruit is 100 times sweeter than erythritol and comes out very bitter if you use as much as 1/2 cup in a cake recipe.
To decrease the high saturated fat content of the cake, can the coconut oil be replaced by, for example, olive oil?
Great recipes you have here! Thanks!
It will come out very dense and taste a lot like olive if you use olive oil. I wouldn’t recommend that. On a keto diet we focus on eating overall fat and saturated fat from coconut oil or MCT are actually a great fat source for us, they are Medium Chain triglycerides fat. Enjoy
Hi! Can i use powdered erythritol for this recipe?
Hi… Am a new baker & gonna try this interesting recipe tmrw. Can u eliminate the xylitol (or any form of sugar) completely?
I didn’t try the recipe without the erythritol, it can make the cake softer so I won’t recommend that. Enjoy,
It should work yes
Just made today fabulous!!
My mother made a great pound cake and this recipe was awesome!! Thank you
I am so happy! Thanks for sharing this lovely feedback with me
Hai, did you use large eggs for this recipe?
yes, always large eggs, enjoy
I would like to make a vegan version of this cake. I usually substitute eggs for psyllium husk. Would you recommend using psyllium husk as the egg replacer?
You could try to sub using the standards flax egg as it has almost the same sort of binding factor as real egg does
Unfortunately flax eggs won’t work here, there is too much eggs involved and no starch in the flours as its a keto loaf. You must use eggs!
My keto cakes and pound cake doesn’t work with vegan replacer because keto baking recipes rely on eggs to binds – they don’t have the starch in the flour to do so.
This is one of the best, if the THE best, low-carb cakes I’ve tried so far. The only downside is, I had a hard time keeping my hands off! 😀
Thank you so much for this recipe.
Yummy a 10 plus
This was a home run! Made this for Thanksgiving for some of us that can’t do a lot of sugar. The taste is delicious and my son, who is not a fan of non sugar desserts, loved it. We will be keeping this in our dessert book!
Thanks for your lemon pound cake recipe, turned out delicious! I added a raspberry sauce swirl in mine, some extra lemon zest for some more zing and did some candied (keto) lemon slices on to. Also, I (read : my fiancé lol) was impatient to eat it so I put it out in the cold (thanks, Canada) to cool off quicker and it was cool in 30 mins. Glaze stayed on just fine! Mine baked in just about 60 mins, but I have a smaller oven which bakes faster than most.
Effie, I’m just now seeing your comment (April 8, 2021), and I’m glad I saw it—I absolutely LOVE the combination of raspberry and lemon, but didn’t think about it for this recipe. Now that I’ve read your comment, I’m going to make it with a raspberry sauce swirl 🙂
Hi Joyce, glad to help! I’ve used this recipe as a base for many variations and loved everything single one of them! I’ve done a marbled version by adding some cocoa powder in part of the batter & some dark chocolate chips, I’ve done a cinnamon version with candied ginger on top, I’ve done an almond & whiskey version with slivered almond on top. It’s a great recipe, thanks Carine!
Thanks for the lovely feedback!
Thanks for the lovely review and picture on your Instagram, it looks wonderful! XOXO Carine
This was pretty good, but mine was in the dry side. I used butter in the recipie.
If dry it can be for many reason like your almond flour is coarse or you used almond meal. You must use ultra thin almond flour in all my recipes. You may also have a wrong ratio of wet to dry ingredients. For example, coconut flour has 4 times more fiber than any other flour so if you added a little bit too much it will significantly dry out cake. Also use the scoop, pack, level up method to measure keto flours for precision, or weight. Enjoy, XOXO Carine
I have made this cake with butter and a little bit less of the sweetener. Super delicious! <3
I used coconut oil but found it kinda dry but still good. Next time I’ll use butter
I will after I try it I will post it
This turned out amazing. I used swerve for my sweetener. Also used butter instead of coconut oil. Better than Starbucks. Yum
Your recipe was easy and my lemon loaf is moist, lemony, and
delicious! I used butter instead of coconut oil and a bit more lemon sest. It is yummy! Thank you.
Hi there!
Can I use Carbquick instead of almond flour? As in this moment I do not have the amount required. Can I bake it in a fluted cake ring round form?
I have no idea what Carbquick is so I can’t recommend I am sorry. Enjoy, XOXO Carine
The recipe calls for coconut flour. My daughter is allergic to coconut. What can I substitute?
I am sorry to hear that. I didn’t try the recipe without coconut flour but maybe you can try to replace it by more almond flour, usually 3 to 4 times more almond flour so here 3/4 cup to 1 cup almond flour to replace the coconut flour should work. This said, the cake texture will be different probably less moist but good. Enjoy, XOXO Carine
I have no idea what I did wrong :(..
I measured everything correctly. It taste good on the inside but once it finish cooking the outside hardened. It also didn’t rise.. I have a gas oven and the temperature is tricky. Think it’s time for me to catch an appliance sale
I am pretty sure it comes from the gas oven indeed, it doesn’t diffuse heat the same as regular oven
What are the carbs of the cake without glazing?
The nutrition panel won’t change with the glazing. The glazing is zero net carbs since its only water and sugar alcohol from erythritol. Enjoy, XOXO Carine