How To Make A Cake From Scratch Recipe

How To Make Moist Cakes From Scratch

Dont forget to follow my go-to tips for getting your cakes to rise and bake well:

• Preheat your oven for 30 minutes prior to baking.
• Use good quality pans like Fat Daddio.
• Spray your pans with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper.
• Dont overmix your cake batter once you add the dry ingredients.
• Use room temperature wet ingredients.
• Use fresh baking powder.
• Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.

Baked Cake Donut Recipe

• 2 cups cake flour, sifted*
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg, optional
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

*If you dont have cake flour, you can use all-purpose flour instead. Measure out 2 cups all-purpose, then remove 1 tablespoon for each cup used.

**If you dont have buttermilk, there are a few substitutions you can use! Try ½ cup sour cream and ¼ cup milk ¾ cup milk and 2 teaspoons lemon juice or vinegar or powdered buttermilk reconstituted according to the package directions.

Dessertsusing This Sponge Cake Recipe:

• delicious marbled cake filled with fluffy sour cream frosting, sour cherries and walnuts.
• Kyiv Cakelayers of sponge cake, crispy meringe, nuts & delicious dulce de lechde buttercream.
• Tiramisu Cakeclassic cake made with sponge cake soaked with spiked coffees syrup & layered with fluffy cream cheese based cream .
• Rum Balls crumbled sponge cake mixed with dulce de leche buttercream, rum & nuts, then rolled into balls & coated in cocoa.
• Walnut Cake with Coffee Frosting sponge cake soaked in coffee syrup, sprinkled with nuts & layered with cream cheese frosting.
• Peaches and Cream Cake light cake made with peach syrup soaked sponge cake, peaches and cream.

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Why We Love This Vanilla Cake

Everyone needs a great vanilla cake base and I hope this becomes your new favorite! Its made from scratch and the combination of ingredients gives it amazing texture and flavor. We used the same base as our famous Vanilla Cupcakes and made this stunning cake. Youll love the perfectly level cake layers theres no need to trim them.

Homemade Yellow Cake Vs Boxed Cake Mix

Last year, I decided to buy two boxes of cake mix out of curiosity. Id been making homemade cakes for ages, and I was curious why people love box mixes so much.

To be honest, I was impressed by how idiot-proof everything was.

Homemade cake recipes have a method that typically looks something like this: creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs, then alternating between adding the dry and wet ingredients.

All of this happens at varying mixer speeds.

I dumped the cake mix and add-ins into my stand mixer, turned it on high speed, and walked away. A few minutes later, the batter was fluffy as a cloud.

Then I tasted the batter.

I also tasted the finished cake.

They didnt taste good to me.

While I thought the texture was pleasantly soft, the flavor was cloyingly sweet I couldnt imagine adding more sweetness with frosting.

There was also a chemical aftertaste.

At the end of the day, it has to taste good to me. Otherwise, whats the point?

That, my friends, is my argument for why you should make this homemade yellow cake recipe. Im not going to preach about chemical ingredients, because I love Cool Ranch Doritos.

Cakes made from scratch taste better.

Do a side-by-side taste test comparison.

I dare you.

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Whats The Difference Between Yellow And White Cake

Yellow cake and white cakeare almost identical with one exception: the eggs!

This yellow cake recipe gets its color and custardy flavor from egg yolks, whereas white cakes use only egg whites.

Also, while this isnt always the case, white cake often uses cake flour, while yellow cakes typically use all-purpose flour.

Our Best Birthday Cake Recipe

We love classic vanilla cake as a birthday cake because its such a crowd-pleaser.

This particular birthday cake recipe is slathered with our Homemade Funfetti Frosting so its perfect for your special day!

The vanilla cake is ultra moist, with a bold vanilla flavor. Therefore its important to use pure vanilla extract.

It has a delicate crumb with small pores and is very tender and fluffy. Honestly, its about as perfect as a vanilla cake can be.

Whether dressed up for elegant events or served sheet-pan casual, you will absolutely love this easy vanilla birthday cake recipe!

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Coconut Cream Pound Cake

A moist coconut pound cake, a crowd pleaser. I use this recipe for making wedding cake layers.

Provided by Connie Bridges Mallard

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F . Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan.
• In a large bowl, cream together the butter and cream cheese until well blended. Add sugar, and beat until light and fluffy. Blend in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the coconut extract. Mix in flour and baking powder until just moistened, then stir in coconut. Spoon batter into the prepared pan.
• Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting onto a cooling rack.

Nutrition Facts : Calories450.7 calories, Carbohydrate60.7 g, Cholesterol115.7 mg, Fat21.1 g, Fiber1.5 g, Protein6.2 g, SaturatedFat13.4 g, Sodium191.5 mg, Sugar41.1 g

Whats The Difference Between Vanilla Cake And White Cake

White cakes are most commonly served at weddings or used as the base of Funfetti cake to help the colorful sprinkles pop. Unlike most standard vanilla cake recipes, white cake is made with just the egg whites and not the egg yolks. This helps keep the cake pure white, because youve omitted the orange hue of the yolks. Some recipes also use shortening in place of or in addition to butter for an even whiter color, although our recipe sticks to butter to give the cake a richer flavor.

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What Vanilla Is Best

Because vanilla is the main flavor for vanilla cake, quality matters. I always use real vanilla extract. I get it from Costco because its the best price. You can also use vanilla beans or vanilla bean paste if you want to splurge. Dont worry about vanilla extract being brown, you wont be able to tell once the cake is baked.

Try to stay away from artificial vanilla flavoring unless you like that flavor which some people do and thats ok! But ever since I found out what clear vanilla extract is made from, I cant go back haha. Ok this might not really but true but still Read more about the difference between clear and natural vanilla.

How To Make Vanilla Cake From Scratch:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.2. Grease and flour 2, 9 round cake pans and set aside. You can use different shaped pans if you want, you just might need to adjust the bake time.

3. Add butter, sugar and vanilla in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat well until light and fluffy.

4. Add eggs and beat well, one at a time.

5. Add flour and milk, alternating until blended well.

6. Pour cake batter into prepared baking pans and bake for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting and serving.

Note: I slice my rounds in half to create 4 rounds before frosting.

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Whipped Cream From Scratch

Have you made whipped cream from scratch yet? This simple recipe is a total game changer and I can promise you, youll never go back to Cool Whip or canned whipped cream again. Whipped cream from scratch is truly one of the best things life has to offer. Follow the simple steps below and youll have this creamy goodness ready in less than 10 minutes.

• Heavy Whipping Cream look for a high fat heavy whipping cream. I always use Darigold 40%Heavy Whipping Cream.
• Chilled Stainless Steel Bowl for a quick whip, place a stainless steel bowl in your freezer for about 15 minutes before you make the whipped cream. This isnt necessary, but it definitely helps speed up the process.
• When to Stabilize the Cream I only use a stabilizer like E-Z Gel when Im using whipped cream as a filling in a cake. Otherwise, if youre making whipped cream as a topping for another type of dessert, you wont need to stabilize it. E-Z Gel is often found at grocery stores, Walmart, or online. If you cant find it, you can also stabilize the whipped cream with unflavored gelatin. Just follow the instructions on the package for blooming the gelatin.
• Powdered Sugar and Vanilla in addition to the cream and the E-Z Gel, youll also need a little powdered sugar and vanilla extract to sweeten up the flavor.

Why This Basic Vanilla Cake Recipe Works

• This easy vanilla cake recipe uses the 1-2-3-4 method which is from the 19th century. Its an easy method to remember the ratio of ingredients. 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, and 4 eggs.
• I adjusted these quantities slightly to achieve the texture I was looking for. I used half a cup less sugar and a fourth cup less flour. This gave me a lighter cake that isnt overly sweet.
• Cake flour is used for a fine crumb and delicate cake texture.

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Tips To Making The Best Vanilla Cake:

• Bring eggs and butter to room temperature. When all of the cake ingredients are roughly the same temperature everything mixes up so much better! Doing so will help get the moist crumbs everyone loves! Plus, youre less likely to overmix.
• Theres a lot of science when it comes to baking. Follow the recipe closely!
• Want a pure white cake that makes the best wedding cake? Use egg whites! Youll need to use 8 egg whites in this recipe, since 2 egg whites equals one egg. Vanilla extract also has a little bit of coloring, so you can switch it out for the clear baking version if youre wanting a perfectly white cake. Since it only adds a little bit of color, most of the time you wont notice it.
• Let the cake layers completely cool before you begin assembling and icing the layer cake. Even a slightly warm cake will begin to melt the icing which will cause it to shift or collapse. To speed up the cooling time, pop the layers in the refrigerator or freezer!
• Use 3/4 teaspoons of baking soda to help give the cake layers a little more height. The baking powder reacts with the salt and the baking powder to help create a higher rise on your cake layers. Its an optional addition since there isnt much of a difference and the recipe already calls for baking powder and salt.

What Kind Of Cocoa Powder Did You Use

I used Hersheys Unsweetened Cocoa Powder in order to use a brand that is most widely available to my readers. Im also fond of using higher quality cocoa powders like Ghiradellis or cocoa powders from specialty chocolatier shops, but those are pretty pricey. I dont recommend using cheap store brands.

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Olive Oil Apple Cake With Spiced Sugar

Choose your fruits wisely with this one: Gala and Golden Delicious apples will simply melt into the cake, whereas firmer apples, like Granny Smiths, give it a coarser texture. The grated apple and the olive oil contribute moisture to a dessert that features the warm, spicy notes of cardamom and ginger.

How To Make The Best Buttercream Frosting

To get a light and fluffy homemade buttercream frosting, I have a detailed post: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST BUTTERCREAM to give you in depth instruction for making your buttercream unreal! Heres a quick overview.

• Sift your powdered sugar
• Use slightly cold butter and mix on its own for 2 to 3 minutes
• Use heavy whipping cream

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Better Than Anything Cake

Okay, lets get one thing out of the way: Im well aware that the original name for this cake is, Better Than Sex Cake. I even grew up calling it by that name. However, as my almost teenage son dug in to my homemade version of this cake the other day, he asked, what are you calling it, mom? I had totally planned on calling it Better Than Sex Cake, but when I looked him in the eyes and started to say the name, I just couldnt do it and instead said, its my new Better Than Anything Cake.

I guess I just felt like there was no need to explain to my 12-year-old that cake could be better than sex. Maybe well change the name when my kids are older, but for now, its Better Than Anything Cake

Alright, lets get back to the cake!

Simple Sponge Cake Recipe

Simple Sponge Cake is made with only a few ingredients that you probably have in your pantry. This sponge cake is commonly used to make layered cakes but can be used as-is as well. Perfectly soft, spongy, and delicious!

You might also like to check out a Chocolate Version of this Sponge cake.

A Simple Sponge Cake recipe that any baker new to baking or not needs to have in their recipe repertoire. This cake was one of the first Yellow Sponge Cake recipes that I learned to make, and it has served me very well. It is used in many of my cake recipes. Well-loved for its beautiful texture, simplicity in making, and foolproof instructions.

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The Perfect Vanilla Cake Recipe For All Occasions

Even if you consider yourself a cook, rather than a baker, every good cook needs a few go-to desserts in their arsenal.

A soft fluffy vanilla recipe cake is the perfect classic treat to make for work events, potlucks, and of course, birthday parties!

We love this vanilla cake because it is so versatile. You can make it as a layer cake, a sheet cake, or even cupcakes. You can frost it with any sort of frosting you like, because what doesnt go with vanilla.

It stays moist when made in advance. It freezes well. And it rakes in the compliments like nothing else!