Somehow in the past 6 months I’ve become a professional cake decorator, making and decorating cakes for everyone from friends birthdays, events, and even for Tom Felton, so during this new chapter in my baking journey I have now perfected a vanilla cake recipe.
A good vanilla cake recipe is indispensable in a cake decorator’s repertoire because it’s a great base for any flavored frosting or fillings, or it is just the default flavor for any large crowd pleaser.
After slowly making adjustments to this recipe I think this is the perfect cake recipe for layer cakes. It’s both sturdy yet not too dense, with a nice moist crumb that can last up to a few days in the fridge while you decorate.
Locking in Moisture
This cake uses a combination of butter, oil, and buttermilk as sources of fat and moisture. Originally this was an all butter recipe, but by substituting a little bit of the butter with oil, we introduce more fat into the batter, which keeps the cake moist.
This cake uses buttermilk instead of regular whole milk for extra moisture and tenderness. Oftentimes I forget to buy buttermilk for cake making purposes so as a substitution, I use a mix of half yogurt and milk by weight.
For extra security, I lightly soak my cakes in simple syrup before stacking. This is optional depending on when the cake will be served.
Scaling this Recipe
This recipe makes a two-layer, 8-inch cake, or three thinner layers of cake. A two-layer cake is the standard serving size, and the standard size that will fit on a dessert plate for weddings and parties. However, for a standalone tier, I would make a 1.5x batch of this recipe to add more height, so please scale this recipe accordingly to the size/aesthetic of your cake and your serving size.
These cakes also freeze very well. I always decorate cakes from frozen because it locks in some of the crumbs and makes the cake easier to handle and frost. I’ve made as many as a 10x batch in a large commercial mixer at once, baking all the layers I need for the month.
This wedding cake for example uses a 1.25x batch for the top, 1.75 x batch for the middle, and ~3x batch for the bottom. This ended up being a very tall cake, which meant each slice was also cut in half to fit on the plates.
Full recipe is also available on my website for free! For a no ads experience consider joining the croissant crew :)
Makes two 8-inch cake layers.
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