A White Cake Recipe So Good, Even The Chocolate Lovers Will Be Converted

Delish

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.

Transcript

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]

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