The Most Amazing Vanilla Cake is moist and flavorful and made completely from scratch. It’s the best homemade vanilla cake you’ll ever have!
The world of cakes can be a bit confusing. White cake, yellow cake, vanilla cake — aren’t they all more or less the same? Honestly, we love them all, but there are some key differences. White cake is the lightest of the three. It uses oil rather than butter to keep the end result as white as possible, not to mention egg whites only. Yellow cake uses whole eggs and butter to give it that classic yellow color. Vanilla cake doesn’t have the same rules to follow. It can use whole eggs and butter, but it isn’t required. The most important aspect of a vanilla cake is that it uses enough vanilla to really make that flavor pop. With a whole tablespoon of vanilla in this recipe, you are sure to find that this is the most amazing vanilla cake ever. You’ll never use a boxed cake mix again!
Room Temperature Ingredients:
Several of the ingredients in the recipe are listed as being room temperature. By following this method you’ll have a better texture in the end so it is worth the patience. For the milk, we simply warmed it in the microwave for 30 seconds because the idea of leaving it out on the counter to reach room temperature didn’t sit well with us.
Salted vs. Unsalted Butter:
This recipe is developed using salted butter because that is what most people tend to buy and have on hand. I like to keep my recipes convenient for home cooks so salted butter is used whenever possible in my recipes. Unsalted butter certainly works, but you may need to add a pinch more of salt.
Is vegetable oil necessary?
There is a combination of butter and vegetable oil in this recipe. I find that vegetable oil gives the cake a lot more moisture.
Can The Most Amazing Vanilla Cake be made into cupcakes?
Why, yes it can! You can find full instructions for the most amazing vanilla cupcakes here!
Can I make this recipe into 3 layers?
Yes, you can! Whether you prefer two thick layers or three thinner layers, this will still be the most amazing vanilla cake you’ve ever had!
Egg Substitute:
There are numerous options for substituting eggs in baking recipes. You can always try using one of those.
Pan Sizes:
You are certainly welcome to try alternative pan sizes, but you’ll need to adjust cooking times and be careful as to how much you fill the pan. This recipe is written for 9-inch round pans. Eight-inch and ten-inch pans will require adjustments to the recipe.
Gluten Free:
Use gluten free flours at your own risk. Not all gluten free flours are equal and most don’t work as a straight forward substitute. I have not tested any gluten free flours in this recipe as I do not have Celiac’s disease.
Do you have a chocolate version?
Why, yes I do. I call it The Most Amazing Chocolate Cake.
Frosting:
Feel free to use your favorite frosting with this cake. You can never go wrong with buttercream frosting!
Storage Instructions:
Store your cake in an airtight container for up to 4 days. If frosted with a simple buttercream, it can be left at room temperature. If you use a cream cheese frosting, you will need to store this in the fridge.
If you like this recipe, you may be interested in these other delicious cake recipes:
- The Most Amazing Red Velvet Cake
- The Most Amazing Strawberry Cake
- The Most Amazing Carrot Cake
- Luscious Lemon Cake
Watch the video below where Rachel will walk you through every step of this recipe. Sometimes it helps to have a visual, and we’ve always got you covered with our cooking show. You can find the complete collection of recipes on YouTube, Facebook Watch, or our Facebook Page, or right here on our website with their corresponding recipes.
Would olive oil work?
It works, but some people don’t like what it does to the flavor.
? my cake turned out really dry.. what could have gone wrong?
Thank you for sharing this nice recipe, I tried it, it came out nice and tasty, but have 2 notes, the cake surface came completely white though it was baked well but the color of the top was extremly white as if itsn’t baked.
The other note is that the cake clolor is white, that sounds good for me but just want to ask why yours is yellow and mine is white?
Again thank you so much???
Did you use egg yolks or just egg whites? Did you use clear vanilla extract or regular? Those are the two things that tint the color yellow.
Nop, I used whole eggs, yolks and whites
And had used powdered vanilla it’s a white powder
Is this batter supposed to be very thick? it was so thick it wouldn’t spread in the pans at all. I have made the chocolate version of this recipe and that batter was very thin. The cake had a good taste, but was a little on the dry side. I’m not sure what I can tweak to change that.
Yes, it’s supposed to be thick.
this cake came out so amazing definitly one to try
I was wondering if this cake can be made with all butter? I only have corn oil.
It’s a bit on the dry side with all butter. Corn oil would work though.
I’ve tried several yellow cake recipes in the past and they’ve all come out with a corn bread texture. I’m hopeful this one will turn out well since it has great reviews. Would you recommend using this yellow cake as the base for crumb cake? I’m considering halving the recipe.
Worth a try!
please, i can’t seem to find the proportion for butter and veg oil. Can you please tell me what it is?
It’s written in the recipe.
I made your chocolate buttermilk cake and it came out absolutely amazing, this one came out really dense.. I’m not really sure what happened.
Sounds like it didn’t rise. The buttermilk should interact with the baking powder to make it fluffy. Perhaps your baking powder is expired?
This recipe was really disappointing. I made cupcakes out of it, and they were completely tasteless–except for tasting of oil. I’ve used oil in plenty of other recipes before, but I’ve never actually TASTED or SMELLED the oil in the finished product. It smelled like I was deep-frying doughnuts instead of baking cupcakes as these were cooking. The bottoms of these cupcakes were drenched with oil when they came out of the oven, and although the bottoms dried as they cooled, the smell of oil lingered on the baked goods. On the plus side, the cakes were very moist and fluffy, which was their saving grace. The batter is not sweet, nor is it particularly vanilla-y, so if you’re looking for an extremely bland cake, this recipe might interest you. I slathered them with sugary frosting, but still the resounding flavor experience was “drenched in oil.” So upsetting; I was really looking forward to a great vanilla cake recipe. The search continues…
oooo, that’s definitely not what is supposed to happen at all. Sounds like something went wrong.