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Butterfly cakes are such a lovely treat and something we bake often for a birthday party buffet spread or just as a sweet treat when we’re feeling a little bit fancy.

Super easy to make, they look fantastic for minimal effort and the children always absolutely love them. Over the years we’ve made traditional vanilla butterfly cakes and chocolate butterfly cakes but we also love to make lemon butterfly cakes, delicious citrus cakes that are perfect for the spring.

How do you make lemon butterfly cakes?

To make these lemon butterfly cakes you simply make fairy cakes before turning them into butterflies. The cakes are made with self raising flour – although you could use plain flour or all purpose flour with a little baking powder or baking soda.

You can use any butter or maragrine for this bake and literally any sugar. We mostly use caster sugar but granulated sugar or light brown sugar works well too.

For the lemon flavouring we simply use the zest and juice of a lemon although you can use bottled lemon juice if you wanted.

We top the cupcakes with lemon frosting or lemon buttercream that we buy premde but you could make it yourself if you wanted. Here’s a lovely recipe for lemon buttercream icing.

Although we just top these butterfly cakes with icing, you could also add a spoonful of lemon curd to make lemon curd butterfly cakes and give an extra layer of lemon flavour.

These butterfly cupcakes are easy to make and taste fantastic. They’re a bake that you don’t need a reason to make but that will always be well received. Absolutely delicious.

If you’re looking for other recipes to make, here’s our Mars Bar Tray Bake, Weetabix Banana Snack Bars and Chocolate Chip Flapjack recipes. You can see all our recipes to date here.

What equipment do you need to make these little butterfly cakes?

You will no doubt have most of the equipment you need for this recipe at home already but, in case it helps, here are the things we use to bake these cakes at home:

These are pretty much staples for baking in any home kitchen and once you have them you won’t need to replace them often.

How to bake a Lemon Butterfly Cake:

Ingredients

145 g self raising flour
145 g sugar – granulated or caster sugar work well
145 g margarine or butter, preferably at room temperature so it’s nice and soft or unsalted butter
3 eggs
Zest and juice of half a lemon

To decorate

lemon buttercream

Instructions

Preheat oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5
Put cupcake cases into a muffin tray.
Mix all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and then spoon into the cupcake cases until they are half full.
Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until nicely golden on top.
Leave to cool fully.

Here’s how to make a butterfly cake out of cupcakes:

Cut out the top of the cakes using a spoon, fill with lemon buttercream and then cut the discarded piece of cake in half before placing the cake pieces back on top to resemble butterfly wings.

The cakes can then be eaten as they are, dusted with icing sugar or sprinkled with sprinkles!

They store well for a few days in an airtight container.

If you’d like to print or pin the Lemon Butterfly Cakes Recipe for later you can do so below. Enjoy!

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