Light and Lemony

After a couple of weeks of holiday dinners and extra treats, when asked what I would bring to a post-Christmas gathering, I replied "not chocolate!" So I begin to look for something lighter and my tastes seemed to call for lemon. My plans were for a lemon angel food cake, but I also found this recipe of Lemon Dream Cake that I couldn't pass on. So I made both (so much for eating lighter!).
For the Angel Food cake, I used Duncan Hines' recipe. How can something so involved and costly to make from scratch (breaking and whipping all those eggs, etc) be so simple with a mix (just add water)?  There probably are those who swear a home-made-from-scratch angel food cake is the best, but I'm happy with the box. I added 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract to the water for a lemon taste and served it with warm lemon curd (it wasn't homemade either!)
The Lemon Dream Cake is yummy, and I think it would be fun to try it with other flavors of cake mix and pie filling - lime? strawberry? pumpkin?

Lemon Dream Cake

Ingredients:
French vanilla cake mix
ingredients for cake mix
1 can lemon pie filling

Frosting: 1 tub lemon flavored frosting and 8-oz tub of Cool Whip. (I used 1/2 of each and there was plenty to cover the cake.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9 x 13-inch cake pan with baking spray.
Prepare the cake mix as directed. Pour into the prepared baking pan. Place spoonfuls of lemon pie filling over the batter and swirl. (I did find that it works best if you don't use the whole can of pie filling, use all but about 1/2 cup)
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 - 40 minutes. Cool.
Combine lemon frosting and Cool Whip and spread over cake. (Cake will need to be refrigerated)

Cake mix with spoonfuls of pie filling

Swirled

Baked

Frosted

Almost gone!