Just Easy Recipes Vanilla Cake

Cindy has over 10 years experience as a recipe blogger and was a contributor at BettyCrocker.com. Cindy began contributing to Simply Recipes in 2017.

I love baking because being known as the bringer-of-cake is pretty great. I truly and deeply believe in the magic of homemade birthday cake, and I basically want everyone to give it a shot at least once.

There’s a little butter that gets worked into the dry mixture, which keeps the cake tender and adds a little flavor. I also use oil because it keeps the cake from drying out.

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The perfect frosting for this cake is a basic vanilla buttercream (sometimes called American Buttercream), which is a simple mixture of butter, powdered sugar, cream, and flavoring whipped together until fluffy and spreadable. This cake would be great with pretty much any frosting you love.

I tested this cake with both cake flour and all-purpose flour. Both work great! You can do a direct substitution (by weight) with no problems.

The cake flour makes for a slightly more tender cake, and in my opinion, gives you a little more wiggle room in the way of overmixing since it has less protein (overmixing + protein = gluten + chew).

Healthy Vanilla Cake

It can also be baked as two 9-inch rounds for a layered cake. The round layers can potentially bake more quickly. So be sure to check them after about 22 minutes in the oven.

I usually make this cake the night before, just because I like to split up my baking and frosting days (a lot of cake moves through my kitchen!). But this cake is fine baked the same day or in advance.

If you’re making the cake a day ahead, just cool and wrap it well with plastic and leave it at room temperature until you are ready to frost it.

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If you want to bake the cake even farther in advance, bake and cool it as directed. Then, turn the cooled cake out and wrap it well in a double layer of plastic wrap, and freeze for up to two weeks.

Since buttercream frosting is pretty easy to make, I always wait to frost the cake the day I serve it. However, if you want, you can make the frosting in advance and store it in an airtight container in either the refrigerator (for several days) or the freezer (for several weeks).

Sure, you can make this in a 9x13-inch pan or two 9-inch rounds. But the recipe works great for a cupcakes or even a Bundt cake. For cupcakes, bake for 15 to 18 minutes. For a Bundt cake, bake for 45 to 55 minutes. You should be able to get 24 cupcakes from this recipe.

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*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2, 000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate. In cases where multiple ingredient alternatives are given, the first listed is calculated for nutrition. Garnishes and optional ingredients are not included.

When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.This is my best vanilla cake recipe.A classic butter cake but with Japanese techniques applied for the most plush, soft and moist yellow cake like you’ve never had before. This professional bakery style cake stays fresh and moist for 4 days — that’s unheard of! Use the same batter for perfect Vanilla Cupcakes.

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So if all that appeals to you too, then I dare say this might become YOUR favourite vanilla cake recipe too! And here’s a little preview to show you how soft and fluffy it still is after 4 days:

This vanilla cake is the result of bringing together the best of Japanese sponge cakes and Western butter based cakes. It has the world renowned very soft, fluffy crumb of Japanese cakes anduses the Japanese baking method, combined with the buttery goodness and sweetness of Western cakes.

But it’s more sturdy than Japanese cakes which are so delicate, they can really only be decorated with cream. Anything heavier and the bottom layer gets squished!

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Also, importantly, this cake incorporates my cake shelf-life requirement to stay perfectly fresh for at least 2 days after it’s made. (This lasts perfectly for 4 days.) Because who bakes cakes on the day they are intended to be served??

Interestingly, baking experts will recognise the method and ingredients in this cake to be very similar to what is called a Hot Milk Cake in America – albeit strangely it’s often described as a “dense” cake, presumably because they don’t preserve the egg aeration to the extent I insist we do and also because sometimes it’s baked in bundt pans which takes far longer to bake (= dense cake).

The words“best served on the day” on a cakerecipe is never a good sign – it means it drastically degradesovernight. But THIS cake recipe is near perfect for 4 days – even 5 days!

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I don’t want to get too cake nerdy with you… but one sign of a well made cake is an even crumb. No large tunnels or lots of irregular size holes. It looks and tastes

There’s a widely held misconception that cake flour is the secret to a better cake. That’s only true for certain cakes. For this one, plain / all purpose flour yields better results.

Here’s what you need to make this plush, soft vanilla cake.No cake flour, no buttermilk, no sour cream. Tried them all – this cake is better with plain / all purpose flour and just milk.

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Making a really good cake that starts with “cream butter and sugar until fluffy….” is actually harder than you think. The butter has to be at the perfect temperature, and you can’t have chilly mixing bowls.

If it’s too hard, you’ll never manage to cream it and you’ll end up with grease pockets. If you beat butter too long, you break the air pockets.

There’s more room for error with cookies and some other types of baked goods. But the butter temperature needs to be near perfect for cakes and cupcakes. (17°C/63°F is the perfect temperature for “softened butter”).

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I’ve tried dozens and dozens over the years, to compare to this Vanilla Cake. This recipe puts all to shame in terms of fresh shelf life.

Heads up – this is a long step by step explanation post, to ensure those who are new to baking are armed with everything they need to make this cake perfectly, first time and every time!

Hard to find the perfect cake because there is nothing to hide behind, it is one of the purest forms of baking. And the “cream butter and sugar” step is the biggest cause of problems, setting up the cake for success or failure from the very start (read above).

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A stand mixer makes this vanilla cake a breeze to make, though it can be made with a handheld electric beater.While it takes time tobeat the eggs to make a lovely fluffy cake, this recipe is more fail-proof than the usual “cream butter and sugar until fluffy” recipes – read the above box for why.

1. Whip the eggs and sugar –Beat the eggs with sugar for a whole 7 minutes until thick and glossy, it changes from yellow to white, and tripled in volume (just over double depth in the bowl).

The aeration created during this step is key for a soft, fluffy crumb. This is a technique borrowed from Japanese sponge cakes.

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2. Gradually add flour – Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Thenadd into egg mixture in 3 lots, mixing for just 5 seconds on Speed 1 in between. This should make the flour

3. Hot melted butter in milk – use a microwave or stove to heat milk with the butter until it melts. Believe it or not, HOT milk helps with aeration in this cake. I doubted it, so I tried with cooled melted butter in milk and found it did not rise as well.

The use of hot milk with melted butter in a cake batter is another technique used in some types of Japanese sponge cakes (such as this one from Chopstick Chronicles, a Japanese food blog). Interestingly, I recently discovered it is also used in a traditional Southern cake called Hot Milk Cakes.

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4. Mix some batter into hot milk – this serves two purposes: a) bring down the temperature of the hot milk so it won’t “cook” the eggs (ie. tempering); and b) it lightens up the density of the hot milk (see