How to Make a Vanilla Cake Recipe for Beginners

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How to Make a Vanilla Cake Recipe for Beginners

Want a moist delicious cake for your next event? Follow along as I walk you through how I make this tasty vanilla cake.

This vanilla cake recipe is my base go to recipe and is versatile so I am able to modify it to make new flavor variations. This is especially great for beginner bakers because it so easy to make. This is my take on the original white almond sour cream cake (WASC).

The Ingredients

I use all of your “traditional” ingredients for this vanilla cake recipe: butter, eggs, flour, sugar, and extracts. But, I also add a few special ingredients like buttermilk instead of whole milk, sour cream, and a boxed cake mix. Any kind will due, but I use Duncan Hines.

These ingredients are able to be swapped out like flavored yogurt instead of sour cream ( you can even do half and half like I did in my tutorial here) or switch it up with different flavored extracts.

The Tools

This easy vanilla cake recipe makes three, 3″ high 6″ cake layers. You can torte the layers as needed or use as is. I bake my cakes in these cake pans here that measure 3″ high versus the standard 2″ high pans. This vanilla cake recipe can also be used to fill one and a half three inch high 8″ cake pans or six to seven 4″ cake pans.

Prepping Ingredients

I start off making this vanilla cake recipe by weighing out all of my ingredients using a food scale. I weigh my ingredients using ounces because that’s how I learned, but you can weigh in grams as well.

The difference in weighing your ingredients versus measuring them in cups is that it provides more accurate consistency in your cakes. 1 pound is one pound, but one cup can be 4 ounces or 5 ounces depending on how you scoop it.

Bringing your ingredients to room temperature is an important step in most baking recipes. Bringing the ingredients to room temperature helps them to emulsify and bind together easier. For this recipe, I personally allow the ingredients to come to room temperature.

To help speed up the process of bringing my ingredients to room temperature, I run warm water over my eggs and let them sit. Be sure it’s not too hot so it doesn’t cook your eggs. I also heat my wet ingredients in the microwave in 15 second bursts to warm it up.

However, there are times when I’m in a pinch (or just being lazy) and I either don’t allow them to fully come to room temperature or I just mix them cold. And guess what? It doesn’t make THAT big of a difference. Don’t you love this vanilla cake recipe already??

Mixing in the Ingredients

While I wait for my ingredients to come to room temperature, I prepare my pans. I use these round Fat Daddios cake pans. This batter fills six to eight 4 inch cake pans, or three 6 inch cake pans, or one and a half 8 inch cake pan. Please note that I use 3” high pans and not 2”.

I spray the inside of the baking pan with canola oil then lightly coat with flour. This causes my cakes to slide right out of the pans!

Once my ingredients are room temperature, I like to mix groups of ingredients together. This is totally optional and just how I like to do it, but you can totally dump them all in in one go!

I add my eggs and extracts to my buttermilk and gently whisk. Then I add my yogurt to my sour cream and mix. I put all of my dry ingredients into the bowl of my stand mixer and give them a little stir.

Then I start adding everything together. First the melted butter into the dry ingredients, then the egg and buttermilk mixture followed by the sour cream. I let it mix all together until smooth like slightly loose pudding.

Baking the Vanilla Cake

Once I evenly pour my batter into my pans I put them in the preheated 350 degree oven for 28-32 minutes. Adjust the baking time according to your oven.

Once the cakes are baked, remove them from the oven and allow to cool for about 10-15 or until you can safely handle them.

This is one of the most satisfying parts of baking for me. Releasing the cakes from the pan. It’s something magical in flipping the cakes back and forth and the satisfaction of having the cake easily slide out of the pan unharmed gives me all the feels. You can leave the cakes upside down and this will help flatten out the tops of your cakes so you don’t have to level them if you would like. But I like to cut into cakes sooooo…I don’t mind having to level them. Plus, this allows me to taste my cakes to make sure it is up to my standards.

And enjoy your delicious vanilla cake! It has a beautiful crumb, it’s light and fluffy but still firm enough to hold its shape and not crumble. And yes, it tastes great too. You can watch me make this vanilla cake recipe on my YouTube Channel here. If you would like to see me decorate these vanilla cake layers, be sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications because that tutorial is up next and you don’t want to miss it. Until next time, peace.

Recipe

• Difficulty: Beginner

• Prep Time 20 min

• Cook Time 30 min

• Rest Time 10 min

• Total Time: 1 hr

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Servings: 20

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• 1 box White Cake Mix (I prefer Duncan Hines)

• 5 ounces Flour

• 7 ounces White Sugar

• 8 ounces Buttermilk (Room Temperature)

• 9 ounces Sour Cream (Room Temperature (Can sub flavored yogurts))

• 4 large eggs (Room Temperature)

• 4 ounces Melted Salted Butter (Can use unsalted butter just add a pinch of salt to recipe.)

• 3 teaspoons Vanilla Extract (Mix and match extract flavorings to make new combinations)

• Spray Canola Oil (To coat baking pan)

• 1/4 cup flour (To dust baking pans)

Instructions

How to Make an Easy Vanilla Cake for Beginners

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. 

2. Spray baking pans with canola oil, then lightly dust with flour. Be sure to cover base and sides of pans. 

3. Add flour, sugar, and cake mix into the bowl of your stand mixer. Mix to combine. 

4. Add in room temperature buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, melted butter, and extracts into stand mixer with dry ingredients. 

5. Mix wet and dry ingredients together until smooth. It should look like slightly runny pudding with little to no clumps. 

6. Evenly distribute cake batter into coated cake pans. Bang out air bubbles and flatten the tops. 

7. Bake in preheated oven for 28-35 minutes depending on your oven. 

8. Remove from oven and allow to cool in pans for 5-10 minutes or until you can safely touch them. Remove them onto cooling racks to cool completely. Use as desired.

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