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.
Made this cake this past weekend for Easter, with chocolate filling & icing. I thought is was very good in taste and was very well received by everyone. My only issue was the height of the cake layers, they certainly were not as fluffy looking as in your picture. I made the recipe in (3) 10″ pans, I only have even numbered sizes. But I did adjust the recipe by 1.25% to account for that, a 10″ cake pan is 1.23 times the area of a 9″. Was the cake in your picture baked in (3) 9″ pans and did you just make a single batch of cake for that? I’m going to up the recipe a bit more and try again next time, I just would have like slightly thicker cake layers. But otherwise, yum yum yummy!
The cake in the photos was made in 3 (9-inch) pans.
This cake is phenomenal! I did a three layer cake, with each layer being a different hue of pink. I made strawberry cream cheese icing, and a strawberry filling, To finish, I added fresh berries on top. It was beautifully moist, full of flavour, and nice and dense (not heavy though). I made three 9″ rounds with the recipe. I will be adding this one to the recipe box as my go to vanilla cake for sure!
I baked this cake yesterday. It is delicious and really easy to make (no separating eggs!). I don’t bother with layer cakes so I dumped all the batter in my commercial 10 by 2 round cake pan and baked it 60 minutes and it raised nicely. While cooling, it did fall but just very slightly. The cake is a bit dense and has a good chew to it. Cake mixes are light and fluffy because of all the added ingredients. I like baking from scratch because you only use a few simple ingredients. It tasted lovely!
I used soy milk, grapeseed oil rather than vegetable oil, poured it into a 10×13 pan without parchment as I planned to serve it in the dish over a period of days rather than as a layer cake. i topped it with a chocolate buttercream frosting. It was a little bit denser than I would have liked but I’d definitely make it again!
Would this work in a bundt pan?
Yes, but the cooking time will be somewhere near an hour and the crust will be much thicker.
Can this be swirled with your chocolate cake batter to make a marble cake?
Yes it can!
Do you have a vanilla cream cheese icing receipe? Also do you have an Amazing white cake receipe?
https://thestayathomechef.com/perfect-cream-cheese-frosting/
https://thestayathomechef.com/most-amazing-white-cake/
Can you use gluten-free all-purpose flour to convert it to a gluten-free cake?
I have not tested that.
Can I use orange juice instead of buttermilk?
I don’t recommend that.
Hi! Is there any possibility that I could make this into a one layer cake. I am a beginner so I want to start with easy things. Thank you so much for sharing your recipes excited to try it!?
Yes, divide all of the ingredients by 1/3
I just made it as a 1 layer cake! I made the entire recipe and used a large casserole dish (a little bigger than 9×13). It took about 90% of the batter and I put the rest in 4 individual cupcake cups. It took about 30 minutes to bake. It turned out great!