My healthy gluten free lemon drizzle cake is easy to make, bursting with goodness and yummy zing. High in protein from quinoa, flax seeds and cashew nuts.

For this gluten free lemon drizzle cake recipe I use a whole lemon in the quinoa cake batter. This is because the pith contains lots of goodness and fibre that also helps the texture of the recipe. Don’t worry if there’s a seed or two in the lemon these are fine to eat, they’re like a natural aspirin.

Vegan Lemon Drizzle Cake Recipe Video

Play on YouTube / Play no music lemon drizzle cake video recipe

It’s fine to leave a bit of the rind on the whole lemon that is blended when making the quinoa lemon cake. This will add a slight bitterness that elevates the favour to balance it out and I actually aim for some lemon rind.

Lemon rinds contain so much flavour that I like to use the zest of at least one lemon on the top. However always choose unwaxed and untreated lemons as they are safe and healthy to eat.

You can even zest two lemons on top of my vegan lemon drizzle cake for even more of that lemony oil goodness.

I’m using agave nectar as the sweetener in this no-added-sugar lemon cake as I’ve got lots to use and I move soon. I would usually use maple syrup but any similar sweetener can be used.

Often I do use fruit to sweeten my recipes but as this is a white cake I decided not to use dates or raisins to keep it white. If you care less about the colour you can replace with dates or dried fruit and this will also up the fibre content.

Flaxseeds are used in my gluten free lemon cake recipe to replace eggs. You could use chia seeds if you prefer as they are also a good vegan egg replacement but the dark seeds to affect the colour.

Coconut flour is used for my healthy quinoa lemon cake for the texture and because it’s a minimally processed whole food.

You could use normal gluten-free flour if you prefer or buckwheat flour. I’m using the finely ground coconut flour rather than desiccated coconut and it’s made from pure 100% coconut.

The baking powder is optional. I find it gives a slight lift, but this lift does go when it cools so it doesn’t really make a huge difference.

Lots of people prefer not to use leavening agents due to added ingredients. Sadly with a vegan, healthy and gluten-free cake recipe you will never get the lift people are used to from normal cakes, but it still tastes great.

This quinoa gluten-free lemon drizzle cake has a very subtle earthy flavour from the quinoa. One slice is very filling.

The frosting is optional and you can leave it out if you prefer. Or make from another nut like macadamia or sunflower seeds to be nut-free.

Quinoa is generally considered ok on a paleo diet if it’s been soaked and sprouted as you do for this vegan lemon drizzle cake recipe. This soaking and sprouting activated it and reduces the amount of Phytic acid.

I always use whole quinoa as you can sprout it to make it easier to digest and it’s much cheaper than quinoa flour.

Soaking nuts and seeds is very common to reduce the Phytic acid as recommended by diets like paleo to reduce the antinutrients.