This classic white cake is moist, soft, and fluffy and is topped with a silky vanilla frosting. Follow our pro tips to make sure your cake is the best ever.
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00:00 Hey everybody, it's Justin here in the Delish Kitchen Studios.
00:03 I am genuinely kind of just like a piece of New Jersey trash, and as such I like trashy
00:09 things, specifically trashy desserts, cosmic brownies, the bottom of a Tate's cookie bag
00:15 where it's just the crumbles.
00:17 But sometimes I do want to be a little elegant, and this dessert is definitely elegant, baby.
00:23 A white cake that is beautiful, it has like a little delicate white crumb, and a really
00:29 luxurious buttercream.
00:31 It is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I do like to go off sometimes, and we're
00:36 going to do it together.
00:37 Let's do it.
00:38 With any baked good or cake, it's always going to start with creaming two of the staples
00:43 of the American sweets diet.
00:44 That's going to be butter and sugar, baby.
00:47 So into the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, I'm
00:51 going to be adding two sticks of butter and some sugar.
00:55 Then we're going to let it rip, baby.
00:56 It's going to go for like three, four minutes, just until it's nice and light and fluffy.
01:00 Then I'm going to add a little bit of vegetable oil, mix that until just combined.
01:04 All right, this is looking well creamed, and now we can go in with more ingredients.
01:09 If you're thinking, "What is a white cake?"
01:12 Let me tell you, because obviously you've heard of like vanilla cake, but usually what
01:15 comes to mind is that like bright yellow delicious cake that I happen to love.
01:19 The key difference between these two, this is still flavored with vanilla, but a couple
01:23 of things that are going to be different.
01:24 One, we're going to be using only egg whites instead of egg yolks.
01:28 The thing that gives cake like normal egg cake that golden color is the yolk.
01:33 So by adding only whites, we're keeping these a little bit lighter, and we're also not adding
01:37 in the yolk that will change the color.
01:39 In addition, we're going to be using vanilla extract and almond extract, but we don't want
01:43 to color our cake to make it darker because those things are naturally usually brown.
01:47 So we're going to be using clear extract.
01:49 So it's just both vanilla and almond because I freaking love almond extract, but they're
01:54 going to be clear and that won't color our batter as well.
01:57 Go ahead and add your egg whites while the machine is running in three additions.
02:01 Then we're going to add our vanilla extract and our almond extract.
02:04 The next secret and the next ingredient to this cake is sour cream.
02:09 Egg yolks bring a lot of like richness and fat to our cake, so this is going to sort
02:14 of replace that and add some rich creaminess as well as like a very subtle tang that you're
02:20 going to taste like very subtly, basically just detect at the back of your mouth while
02:24 you're eating it.
02:25 That mixed up really well together, and part of that is, and I forgot to mention this earlier,
02:29 all of your ingredients should be room temperature.
02:31 That is like a huge key to making a really cohesive, really amazing cake batter is making
02:36 sure that not just the butter, which needs to cream, but like things like eggs, things
02:40 like sour cream and milk should all be room temperature.
02:44 Now we're going to mix in all of our dry ingredients, and you might be thinking that why would we
02:47 have to whisk them all together before they go into a high powered beater?
02:51 That's because it really just does help incorporate those things together and make sure that the
02:55 leaveners are well distributed.
02:57 Into our bowl of all purpose flour, we're going to be adding baking soda, baking powder,
03:02 and a little bit of kosher salt.
03:04 Whisk that up nice, nice, and then we're going to add about half of that into our mixer.
03:09 Whisk that up until it's nice and combined.
03:11 Then we're going to add some room temperature milk, and then finally go in with the remaining
03:15 half of our dry ingredients, making sure to not over beat it and just getting all the
03:19 dry streaks out.
03:20 No lumpy clumpies.
03:22 And then that will be our batter made.
03:24 This is our beautiful white cake batter.
03:28 It really does, like, it's kind of eerie to see a cake batter that's just white.
03:32 Honestly, when I've made this in the past, I've felt that way because you're so used
03:36 to seeing that beautiful golden cake, but that doesn't mean that this isn't delicious.
03:38 In fact, this is very delicious.
03:40 So we're going to get it into our cake pans.
03:42 We have three matching eight inch cake pans.
03:45 I'm going to go ahead and grease it.
03:47 You can grease it however you want.
03:50 And we also have some parchment rounds that we're going to place in here.
03:54 That's going to be for easy removal once we are baked.
03:58 We're going to go into each pan with equal amounts of batter.
04:02 You can be crazy like me and get a scale and measure out exactly how much, or you can just
04:06 eyeball it if you want something a little bit more rustico or a little bit more just
04:10 like relying on your volume awareness.
04:14 Then you can just use your spat or an offset, smooth it out on top, and we'll get ready
04:18 to bake.
04:19 Our cakes look beautiful and they're perfectly portioned, so they're going to go into a 350
04:25 degree oven for 25 to 30-ish minutes, basically just until you put a toothpick in and it comes
04:31 out dry.
04:32 And you want to be watching because that can happen quickly and you want to take it out
04:34 as soon as that happens.
04:36 All right, watch your cakes.
04:38 The frosting for this cake is a simple American buttercream.
04:41 I can almost guarantee you've made this at home, and if you haven't, it's super easy
04:45 to the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment or in a big bowl with a hand mixer.
04:49 We're going to add a bunch of sticks of very softened butter.
04:52 That's the key here.
04:53 That's what's going to make a difference in making it easier to make.
04:55 And then we're going to start beating that for like 30 seconds to a minute until it's
04:59 nice and fluffy.
05:01 And then we're going to gradually start adding in a bunch of confectioner's sugar.
05:04 This is the bulk of our frosting.
05:06 We're going to keep adding and adding and adding until it is all incorporated.
05:11 Then we're going to add the cream, a bit of clear vanilla extract like from before, and
05:15 some salt.
05:16 Beat that all together.
05:17 If you still feel that your frosting is maybe a little thick, you can add a little bit more
05:20 cream, but this is looking good to me.
05:23 It's me, DJ Cake Maker.
05:26 Hey.
05:27 I hated it.
05:28 I hated it as soon as I did it.
05:29 Okay, we're going to get started decorating our cake.
05:31 I'd say having a rotating cake stand if you want to be a serious cake decorator is almost
05:37 necessary.
05:38 It's not totally necessary, but it really does help you out, especially for someone
05:41 who's like doesn't do it as often as others.
05:43 Something I will do after I've trimmed the cakes, I will pick out the plate that I want
05:47 to serve the cake on and put it on my rotating cake stand.
05:50 This means I don't have to worry about transferring it and everything.
05:53 And if it doesn't have a super high rim, it should be easy to decorate like this.
05:58 So first thing we're going to do, any good cake decorating step, we're going to take
06:01 a little bit of frosting, dab it right into the middle of the plate, and then place our
06:05 bottom cake layer on there.
06:07 That's going to prevent the cake from moving around as we decorate it.
06:10 Then we're going to add a bit of frosting on top, flatten it out, rotating the cake
06:14 stand, using that to help us to spread out that even layer.
06:18 Add in our next layer, another layer of frosting.
06:21 And then finally, we're going to finish with our final cake, and we're going to put the
06:24 flat side that was on the baking dish up so we have that beautiful flat top because I
06:29 haven't done the best job trimming, so I want to hide it at least on top to make it look
06:34 perfect.
06:35 Also, I'd say if your layers are uneven, I would take, like if there are two that are
06:38 most similar, I would put them on the outside and put the thinner or thicker one in the
06:41 middle.
06:42 Or you could just be like me and have janky cakes that don't all match, then we're not
06:46 going to care.
06:47 Once you have the layers stacked up, you can put a bunch of frosting on top and start smoothing
06:50 it out, letting the excess frosting fall to the sides of the cake.
06:54 Then you can start using a bench scraper or a straight line to slightly pull against as
06:59 you turn the cake stand, and that will create those flat side edges.
07:04 You don't have to do this, but I really want to.
07:05 I'm going to top the cake with some beautiful little white nonpareil sprinkles.
07:10 And now we can serve it.
07:11 I feel like I should be in a tea room with some nicer older women surrounding me and
07:19 just giggle, giggle, giggling over pots of tea with this and taking our little baby bites
07:23 of cake.
07:26 This really does, I don't know if it's placebo because of how it looks, but it really does
07:30 taste different than a normal vanilla yellow cake.
07:33 It tastes lighter.
07:34 I think it's because we used egg whites and sour cream instead of yolks.
07:38 I also love the addition of almond extract in this.
07:41 It adds an extra dimension of flavor so it's not just vanilla in your face.
07:44 And I know that the recipe says that sprinkles are optional, but these little white nonpareils
07:49 give you a little like crunchy crunch at the top of each slice that I really like.
07:53 I think this is a great celebration cake.
07:55 I genuinely believe you could probably do six or seven more layers of different sizes
07:59 and make this a wedding cake.
08:01 A little side of berries would be nice with this.
08:04 I think that'd be really great.
08:05 I don't know, this cake makes me really smile.
08:07 It just makes me feel really accomplished and really fancy.
08:10 I don't make a lot of layer cakes, so I'm genuinely really proud of myself for how this
08:14 came out.
08:15 If you want to challenge yourself culinarily, you can find amazing cooking projects here
08:19 on delish.com.
08:20 [music]