Lemon Cakes

These adorable lemon and chia seed cakes are made with creamy Greek yogurt for a rich yet healthy snack.

Joanne Chang makes her moist, lemony, fresh-tasting cupcakes with honey instead of refined sugar, which keeps the sweetness in check. This is the perfect grown-up cupcake.

When Matt Lewis became a baker, he started a quest to re-create the lemon Bundt cakes of his youth. After “a million different versions,” he says, he achieved lemon-cake bliss, using the zest of 10 lemons and a little lemon extract to get the flavor just right. The cake has a moist crumb (thanks to a lemony syrup brushed over the top) and a crackling, sugary glaze.

"The lemon–poppy seed combo is classic," says Vinny Dotolo. "When I was a kid, I ate lemon–poppy seed muffins for breakfast and with ice cream for dessert." Now he turns the pairing into lovely cakes: They have a tender cakey layer on the bottom, a luscious curd-like layer on top and poppy-seed crème fraîche to finish the whole thing off.

A zesty lemon meringue is the perfect topping for these beautiful cupcakes.

This tender lemon cake was inspired by one favored by Manhattan socialites of the '70s.

Cal Peternell likes teaching recipes that are extremely versatile, like this one. The cake is wonderful when it's made with almost any type of fruit, from figs and blood oranges to pineapple. Peternell usually uses sweet Meyer lemons from his neighbor's tree. Regular lemons are tasty too and add a bitter note that's a lovely contrast to the gooey brown-sugar topping.

This is the ultimate buttermilk Bundt cake, nicely browned on the outside, with a soft, tender crumb.

This simple butter cake can be topped with any kind of in-season fruit you may have on hand. Try strawberries in spring, figs in fall or poached pears in winter. This summer version is bursting with fresh blueberries, lemon and coconut. You can use either fresh or frozen berries for this cake, but don’t defrost before using if frozen is all you have, or their juices will seep into the cake batter.

Bill Bowick, co-owner of Charleston's Sugar Bakeshop, created this impressive recipe to use the treasured Bundt-cake pan that Leigh Magar got from her great-grandmother. Leigh served the cake at her grandmother's 92nd birthday party.

“I am obsessed with the chèvre from Texas’s Pure Luck Farm,” says Laura Sawicki. “I love how well it pairs with the cooked rhubarb in my cheesecakes.”

These buttery individual pound cakes get their intense citrus flavor from a double glazing of lemon syrup.

The original recipe for Ryan Hardy's delicious citrusy, nutty and dense cake comes from London's River Café restaurant. He substitutes olive oil for some of the butter and insists that it be served with tangy crème fraîche and an espresso.

This dessert is all about a startling combination of flavors—apricots, smoky Lapsang souchong tea, chocolate, maraschino liqueur and cream. Every element of this dessert can be made in advance.

Grapefruit juice in the pound cake and lemon juice in the glaze give this sweet, tender cake an especially citrusy taste. Be sure to use cake flour rather than self-rising to ensure a feather-light texture.

Pastry chef Lynn Moulton aims for intriguing textural contrasts in her desserts. Her moist lemon cake, for instance, is wonderful on its own; what pushes it over the top into extreme deliciousness is its crackly caramel glaze. "Once they taste it, people can’t stop talking about it," Moulton says.