Italian Lemon Cream Cheese Cake (a.k.a. Olive Garden copy-cat)

Italian Lemon Cream Cheese Cake recipe


I have been to Olive Garden approximately... once. I did not have dessert, so that was not my motive in making this cake. My actual motive(s):


1. I originally saw a recipe for an Italian Lemon Cream Cheese Cake and I thought it was pretty.
2. I love Lemon desserts
3. I love cheesecake
4. I was providing a dessert for Christmas dinner at my sister's house (the hostess with the most-est)

I quickly came to find that this was indeed NOT a creamy cheesecake, but a cream-cheese[space bar] cake. Eh, who cares? It's a lemon dessert so that's good enough for me. I started searching for similar recipes to see how this compared to different ones, and I found the Olive Garden version, and I just chose it because it seemed simpler and I needed to be efficient with my cooking time.

This was easy enough - starting with a box mix. I don't mind making my own cake, but this wasn't the only thing I was making, and I always underestimate how long things are going to take, so I decided this was the way to go.

Then I made the lemon cream cheese filling - easy beans. Put it in the fridge to save for later.

The recipe also calls for a crumb topping. Okay. But wait... it's made with flour and butter and...raw? I thought about it for a while, and all I could imagine in my mind was the taste of raw flour. I decide to nix that. It looks tasty, but I read a bunch of reviews, and no one seemed to think that was very good, so I'm going to trust my instincts and skip it.

I put the cake in the fridge after cooling, and decided I'd take care of this all the next day (Christmas Eve), since this was two days before I needed it.

Now let me say that even though I've done the multiple "levels" of the Wilton cake decorating course, and have done all kinds of piping and flower making, BUT I am the WORST at simply frosting a cake. I mean truly horrible, like a 3 year old iced the cake. But this one came out awesome! It was the best I ever did. Now, that's not to say it was beautiful, but compared to my standard product? I actually heard a choir of angels, I swear. And it looked like the picture - whooo! Finished and back in fridge, done!

The moment of truth - taste time! Everyone thought the cake itself was wonderful (yeah, thanks it was from a box). The rest of it was good, but definitely not lemony enough. Just really creamy with the faintest hint of lemon. If I were to make it again, I would add some lemon zest, or more lemon flavor into the cake itself as well - maybe some juice or just a little extract. If I'm going to have a dessert that's billed as lemon, I want lemon dammit! This just wasn't enough for me.

Was it good? Yes - creamy, not heavy, and Betty Crocker makes a fine white cake. Will I make this again? Nah. It's just not a recipe worthy of saving; I'm sure there's better out there. For all the work, it's just average. If this is what the cake at Olive Garden tastes like, don't waste your cash.

Onto the next!