Vanilla Cake Recipe

Vanilla cake is so good when it’s right. My recipe makes a moist melt in your mouth cake that’s been made and enjoyed by thousands of readers over the years! What could be more beautiful than a vanilla cake layered with delicate, pink buttercream? 

What You’ll Need For This Recipe

Butter: For this recipe you can either use very room temperature butter or partially melted butter. All of the wet ingredients should be room temperature, if they’re cold your butter will clump up a bit. The clumps are fine but not optimal.

Flour: I’m using all purpose flour for this recipe but you can DEFINITELY use cake flour instead. Sub in an equal weight if using a scale. If you’re measuring with cups I’d add 3 1/2 extra tablespoons. If you ever detect a corn flavor from your cake it’s from the AP flour, cake flour will not have that problem.

Sour Cream: If you don’t have sour cream handy just sub in plain yogurt.

Eggs: This recipe uses egg whites but if you would like to use the whole egg just halve the amount of sour cream to 1/4 cup.

How to Make Vanilla Cake

1. Butter and flour three 6-inch pans. Preheat oven to 350F. Add the flour, sugar, leavening agents, and salt to a large bowl. You’ll get the best results it you use a scale for the flour but you can also use the fluffy and spoon technique described below.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients together and set aside.

3. Separate your room temperature eggs. This recipe uses egg whites for a lighter colored cake. The yolks can be used to make custard, pastry cream, or French buttercream.

4. Add the egg whites, sour cream, milk, vanilla, and melted or very room temperature butter to a medium bowl. Whisk together, but don’t worry if the butter clumps up a bit. 

5. Add the wet to the dry and mix until combined.

6. You may see small clumps in the batter but that’s ok! Don’t over-mix in an attempt to get a perfectly smooth batter, everything bakes together in the oven. Over-mixing your batter will activate the gluten, which will cause your cake to shrink down after baking and become dense.

7. Divide the mixture evenly into the prepared cake pans. I like to use a kitchen scale to measure for even layers. Add wet cake strips onto the pans, these will give you a nice flat top perfect for stacking. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the centers are set and springy.  Let the layers cool in the pans for about a minute or so, then invert each layer out onto a cooling rack. 

8. If your making an American buttercream beat the room temperature butter until light and fluffy. Add the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, salt, food coloring and heavy cream. Mix together until a desired consistency is reached. Transfer to a piping bag.

9. Pipe buttercream between the cake layer. Cover the cake with a thin layer of buttercream.

10. Use an offset spatula and a bench scraper to smooth the frosting. You can leave more frosting on the outside or scrape most away from a more rustic look. If adding flowers to the cake use floral tape, cover the stem of the peony or roses to form a barrier between the flower and cake. Add to the top of the cake.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do You upgrade your Cake?

• Use great ingredients! Never add artificial vanilla.
• I use a high quality vanilla extract like Nielsen-Massey but there are tons of great brands.
• My only tip if you’re shopping around for vanilla and have no idea what to buy is choose a glass bottle!
• If you want to take the flavor up a notch try using vanilla bean paste. You’ll get lots of vanilla taste and see all the little black seeds mixed in with your batter.

How do You Make it Moist?

To make cakes moist I always use whole milk, and either sour cream or yogurt. Aside from adding a slight tang to balance the sweet Sour cream and yogurt give you a rich, moist flavor that’s hard to beat!

How do you make it light and fluffy?

• Fluffiness comes from using the right amount of leavening agent; too much and the cake will collapse, too little and it will be dense.
• If you head over to my German Chocolate Cake post you will see another way to get a moist and fluffy crumb; creaming the butter and sugar coupled with whipping egg whites until they reach the soft peak stage then folding them into the batter.

Is There a Difference Between White and Vanilla Cake

Vanilla cake is flavored with vanilla but a white cake just means that the cake is whiter from using egg whites only.  White cakes are often flavored with vanilla but can be flavored with rosewater, lemon zest, orange blossom water, or any number of things! I’ve got a WONDERFUL White Cake Recipe on the blog if you’re looking for one.

How do I adjust this recipe for 8 or 9 inch pans?

Double the recipe for 3 eight inch pans and triple the recipe for 3 nine inch pans. This recipe makes JUST enough batter for 3 six inch pans. I would note you can bake this as two six inch layers, which will give you nice thick layers.

What Frosting Goes With This?

American buttercream: Sweet and Easy

This is my go to frosting and perfect for people who like it sweet! Beat the room temperature butter with powdered sugar, a pinch of salt and some vanilla extract. Super fast and a total crowd pleaser. Check out my vanilla buttercream post for all the tips and tricks as well as a full how to video!

Swiss and Italian Meringue Buttercream: Silky, light and not too sweet

Swiss and Italian buttercream are both meringue-based so you’ll be adding butter to a meringue made with egg whites and sugar. The result is light as air, smooth as silk and totally delicious.  Not very sweet but really they let the cake shine though. I’ve got very popular recipes with videos for both, click here for Swiss and here for Italian!

French Buttercream: Pipe-able custard

French buttercream is made with egg yolks, sugar and butter so it naturally has a beautiful pale yellow color. It tastes like a custard and has enough structure to pipe easily. Very underrated and you can use the extra egg yolks from this recipe to make it! Click over to my French buttercream post for the full recipe and how to video.

If you find cake decorating to be a bit intimidating then check out my How to Decorate a Cake post, it has lots of helpful tips and a full how to video.

Pro Tips for This Recipe

• If you’re not using 6-inch pans, double the recipe for 8-inch pans or triple the recipe for 9-inch pans.
• Measure your flour correctly! Adding too much flour to the recipe is the most common mistake. The best, and easiest way to measure flour is by using a scale. If you don’t have one then fluff your flour with a spoon, sprinkle it into your measuring cup, and use a knife to level it off.
• Raspberry juice will give a beautiful soft pink color with no food coloring.
• If you see little clumps of butter after you mix the wet ingredients don’t panic, it all works out by the time you mix in the dry ingredients. You can even use melted butter and warm the milk and sour cream up a bit if you like.
• You can substitute whole milk yogurt for the sour cream if desired, I do it all the time and can’t really tell the difference.
• To get FLAT layers that are moist inside and out try using cake strips! You can buy a set on the shop page or make your own from foil and paper towels at home. I made a whole blog post on it so check it out if you’re interested!
• If you like a less sweet frosting try my Italian or Swiss meringue buttercream recipes! They’re Creamy, dreamy and oh so delicious.

If you’ve tried this cake recipe then don’t forget to rate it and let me know how you got on in the comments below, I love hearing from you!