The Good White Cake Recipe

August 7, 2024

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That is the PERFECT white cake with a comfortable texture, moist crumb, and fantastic vanilla taste; plus, it tastes unbelievable with creamy vanilla buttercream. Cake flour, egg whites, and bitter cream are the secrets and techniques to the most effective texture. The cake batter is my gold commonplace and I take advantage of it as the bottom for a lot of different cake flavors together with strawberry cake, coconut cake, pistachio cake, burnt sugar caramel cake, and extra.

I initially revealed this recipe in 2017 and have since added new images and some extra success ideas.

slices of white cake with vanilla frosting on assorted plates on light pink gingham linen.

Why This Is My Finest White Cake Recipe

This white cake recipe is tailored from my excellent vanilla cupcakes, a longtime reader favourite. The cake is my definition of *cake perfection* and has change into probably the most well-liked cake recipes on my web site. I’m even publishing it in my 2025 cookbook. Right here’s why:

Gentle & ethereal crumb
Fluffy, however not eggy
Pure candy taste
Stick-to-your-fork moist & tender
Fully from scratch
Simple & approachable dessert recipe

I like this cake a lot that I used it as the bottom for a number of different cake recipes I’ve revealed together with espresso chocolate chip cake, pineapple coconut cake, cookies and cream cake, plus extra listed under. I even diminished the amount of cake batter right down to make the proper 1-layer pineapple the wrong way up cake.

It’s my flagship cake recipe, and I crown it with the smoothest, creamiest vanilla buttercream. Rainbow sprinkles add a little bit glitz and glamour as a result of… what’s cake with out sprinkles?

slice of white cake being taken away from cake stand.

Previously 7 years, I’ve made this cake so steadily that I’ve the recipe memorized. I’m speaking birthday events, child showers, summer season events, anniversaries, and even a pair bake gross sales. There are a number of success ideas I’ve picked up alongside the way in which, and I’m thrilled to share them with you so you’ll be able to take pleasure in cake perfection in your 1st attempt.

White Cake Success Ideas

Cream the Butter: To attain a superb rise, correctly cream the butter and sugar collectively. You’ve got the crutch of baking powder and baking soda, however the cake’s crumb really sings when that creaming course of steps in.
Use Solely Egg Whites: Don’t use egg yolks. Utilizing solely egg whites not solely provides you a pristine white cake, but additionally it ensures that the crumb is just not weighed down by the fats in egg yolks. Give it some thought: lighter confections equivalent to marshmallows and angel meals cake require solely the egg whites. It’s the identical story right here. You want 5 giant egg whites on this cake.
Use Pure Vanilla: You want pure vanilla extract for this cake, and a full Tablespoon within the cake batter. You’ll actually style it, so don’t skimp on the quantity. When you have a vanilla bean, go forward and scrape the beans from half of it into the batter for additional taste, or you’ll be able to swap the extract for a similar quantity of vanilla bean paste.
Bitter Cream As an alternative of Egg Yolks: Bitter cream is the cake’s safety blanket. Whereas it incorporates fats just like the egg yolks would, it doesn’t actually overwhelm the crumb. It’s pure moisture and provides essentially the most creamy, tender texture to each chew. It performs the identical vital function in espresso cake, too.
You Want Cake Flour: Cake flour is sort of 30x finer than all-purpose flour. Utilizing it’s a surefire method to obtain a fragile, soft-as-a-pillow texture. It’s bought within the baking aisle and you should use the remainder of the field in any of those recipes that use cake flour together with my well-liked confetti cake.
Room Temperature: Be sure that your entire substances are at room temperature. When substances are the identical temperature, they bind collectively extra readily than should you had some chilly and a few hotter substances. Colder substances, particularly egg whites, will produce a thicker batter and, because it’s chilly, will take longer to bake. This adjustments the whole lot.

Room Temperature Substances

If a recipe requires room-temperature eggs or another ingredient equivalent to milk or bitter cream, ensure you comply with go well with. Recipes don’t try this for enjoyable—room-temperature substances emulsify a lot simpler into batter, which creates a uniform texture all through your baked good. Consider chilly, laborious butter. It’s unimaginable to cream chilly butter right into a comfortable consistency. Identical goes for eggs—they add far more quantity to the batter after they’re at room temperature. Place your eggs in a glass of heat water for 10 minutes, and you’ll briefly heat the milk and bitter cream (individually) on the range or within the microwave to convey up the temperature. Right here’s my trick for bringing butter to room temperature shortly.

ingredients on marble counter including vanilla, sour cream, egg whites, cake flour, and butter.

cake batter spread into 2 9-inch round cake pans.

This Is a 2-Layer 9-Inch Cake

You want two 9-inch spherical cake pans for this batter. This batter doesn’t match into two 8-inch cake pans (it’s an excessive amount of). Three 8-inch pans work, as seen right here in my contemporary berry cream cake, however the layers are skinny. If you wish to make a 6-inch cake, use this 6-inch cake recipe, which is scaled down from at this time’s batter. Be happy to go to my cake pans & conversions web page when you have any questions on altering the pan measurement.

Be sure to line your cake pans with parchment paper rounds, to assist the truffles seamlessly launch from the pan. When you want suggestions for spherical cake pans, I actually like Fats Daddio’s pans and these Wilton cake pans.

9×13-inch pan: Need to bake a sheet cake as an alternative? Observe my recipe Be aware. A single-layer white cake is simpler to organize, beautify, and serve!

White Cake Ornament

Whereas the substances within the cake batter don’t depart any room for substitutions, we are able to have some enjoyable with a wide range of frostings. I choose vanilla frosting, which I embody within the recipe under. However I encourage you to mess around with chocolate buttercream, rainbow chip frosting, or chocolate cream cheese frosting. For a lighter, much less candy possibility, I like pairing this cake with whipped frosting. Every of those frostings are completely exceptional on this pretty cake. The vanilla frosting makes quite a bit, so anticipate a thick layer between the truffles.

Crumb Coat Particulars

To make sure the layer cake is steady, it’s vital to use a crumb coat. A crumb coat is a skinny layer of frosting on the outside of the cake that locks in any unfastened crumbs and helps stabilize the layers. After you stack the two layers with frosting in between, cowl the highest and sides of the layered cake with a really skinny layer of frosting (about 1 cup). If desired, run a bench scraper across the cake to assist clean out the frosting. Refrigerate the uncovered cake for not less than 20 minutes and as much as 1 hour to “set” the crumb coat. Then cowl the highest and sides with the remaining frosting.

spreading frosting on white cake layer and cake shown again with crumb coat.

vanilla frosted cake with rainbow sprinkles on white ruffled cake stand.

slice of white cake with forkful taken out on ruffled ceramic plate.

Right here Are All of the Cake Flavors Made From This Good Batter

It’s spectacular that this mixture of substances can produce so many truffles. I’ll ALWAYS flip to this recipe.

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