This cake is just the best. Dense, moist, delicious, and perfect for stacking and carving. It’s not as heavy as a pound cake, but too so light and fluffy you feel like you’re eating air either. This is a sophisticated vanilla cake, and I know you’re going to love it.
Vanilla Cake
Created by admin on March 17, 2016
Related
- Prep Time: 20m
- Cook Time: 1h 40m
- Total Time: 3h
- Yield: 9" round cake
- Category: Cakes
Ingredients
Cake
- 375 grams (13oz) butter, softened
- 2 1/2 cups sugar
- 5 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose plain flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup low fat milk
- 125 grams (4.4oz) light sour cream
Buttercream
- 250 grams (8.8oz) unsalted butter, softened
- 500 grams (1lb 1.6oz)icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 165°C / 330°F. Grease and line 9 inch (22cm) round cake tin.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla extract.
- Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and sour cream. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.
- Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 1hour 40 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Cool the cake in the tin for 20 minutes. Remove from the tin and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.
Buttercream
- In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar, one cup at a time, until well combined.
- Gradually add vanilla until combined.
photo by Renee Bell
Can you please post a substitute for eggs? Like a vegan recipe?
Pretty please?
Thanks!
It’s very hard. I’ve used banana, and flax eggs, but it truly is the hardest thing to remove because it does a lot of different things in baking.
I’ve seen many vegan cakes use aquafaba in place of eggs. If you are not familiar with aquafaba, it’s basically just bean water. I think you can purchase it at your local grocer.
Hello. I am from Canada. I was curious why you tend to bake all the batter in one 8-inch pan, instead of two 8-inch pans. Here we tend to bake this amount in two pans. Also, as baked in one 8-inch pan, how tall does it bake after you have levelled it off? Thanks for your help. I am really enjoying some of the recipes and techniques from your country.
You can use two pans, but one 8″ makes an almost 3″ high cake, which is the shortest we sell. You can cut this into two layers. But you can bake 2 cakes, you have have to layer both of them to get similar end height.
Thank you for such a quick reply. I like my cakes to be around 5 inches tall once all torted and filled with buttercream so I generally need 4 inches of cake. I will try it in two pans and see if sorting each pan into 2 layers would work. Have a great night.
Hello. Sorry, I had one more question. I really want to try this recipe out as your reviews are stellar. I was curious if you had this recipe as measured in weights and not by volume as I heard that Austrailian cups are different than North American cups. Thanks.
For Rhidhi,
Try 2 TBS flour, 2 TBS milk substitute (I use cashew milk), 1/2 tsp each of oil and baking powder for an egg substitute. I know it works well with pancakes and maybe it’ll work for cakes too.
Carol
mostly in cakes substitute is lemon juice or white vinegar, and milk and vegetable oil
please search it on net or ask some one else for substitution or watch youtube videos, i hope you will find that.
Hi , can I substitute unsalted butter with salted butter? I only have one lb of unsalted butter at home. Can I use half of each ? Thank you
yes, that will be fine
Can this recipe be doubled or tripled?
yes, sure can
what gas mark or temperature is the cake supposed to be baked at?
165°C / 330°F.
I soooo want to try this recipe but I am feom germany and there is nonsuch thing as light sour cream here :(. We have a type of sour cream with 10% fat. Will that work fine? Or are there maybe any substitues for it? Thank you so much in advance. Love the work you qre doing!
that’s fine to use, or greek yogurt
Would it be ok to use full fat milk & sour cream or does it need to be low fat?
no you can use full fat
Thanks
Just wondering if you’ve ever used this recipie for a rainbow cake, and if so, did the colours take well? If not, do you have a recipie you’d use for a rainbow cake? Thank you
I have done a rainbow cake with the red velvet recipe (it’s on YT), and I’ve done this as a pink ombre, worked a treat!
Hello. I have heard that Australian ‘cups’ are different than North American for measuring. Do you have a recipe that I could try by weight?
Thanks. Your description of this sounds amazing.
Hi Vanessa! I am making a funfetti cake and cupcakes for Easter this year. I was wondering how many cups of Sprinkles I would add to this recipe. Thanks!
I would say about 2/3 cup at least.
Hi, love your tutorials and recipes! Is it possible to substitute butter for veg oil? Or half and half? Is so? How much oil instead of butter? The thing is in need to make a cube 12″ x 12″ x 12″ so i need a lot of cake and I don’t want to make it so expensive.
I am in looooove with your succulent cake, need to try!
Thanyou.
I haven’t tried this with oil, so I can’t be sure. But you could try exchanging half for oil, each gram of butter for mL of oil.
Hi, I want do do this cake, but with two different sponges. One I want to do like this one. The other one In want to at melted dark chocolate. Is this ok, or do I have to change the recepie a bit?
Thank for your help
Carola
I’ve never added dark chocolate to this one, but you could exchange half cup of plain flour for cocoa, and a bit of chocolate.
Hi Vanessa, left a comment above but haven’t heard from you. Any chance you can reply? I was hoping to make the chocolate cake for Easter
Thanks in advance
Sorry, I can’t seem to find the question. Can you ask again?
Can this cake be made a day or two in advance? Thanks
absolutely!
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
I love this recipe, have tried it and it was awesome. Can I make a chocolate version? If yes, how? TIA!
Can I use condensed milk instead of whole milk.
I haven’t tried that, but it might be pretty sweet.
Hi, if I use 8″pan, how much ingredient i need to cut off? Some of the cake recipe using two cake or more to bake, but is hv small oven, can I use only one pan to bake? Thanks
You can bake the entire recipe in a 3″ high pan that is 8″ in diameter. That will take over 2 hours to bake, but I do it all the time.
Hi Vanessa!
Thanks for your recipe . I do not speak english. I write from Italy . May I know the doses for a 15 cm pan diameter ( 6 ” ) ? How high your pan ? Thanks .
half the recipe, or you can make two 6″ rounds that are 2″ high each.
Sorry if I haven’t sour cream what I can put
greek yogurt works
Hello from Paris! My 5 year old daughter (and myself) are obsessed with your tutorials, we love watching them together and can’t wait to try this recipe. I noticed in the other comments that you said you have used this recipe for the pink ombre cake. Did you quadruple this recipe, making 4 cakes each with the different shade of pink, or did you double this recipe and then divide it into 4 bowls to add the colour to before baking in 4 different pans? I hope that makes sense. Also, do you remember how much of the pink colour you added for each layer, or did you just “eyeball” the colours? Thank you so much
So I just eyeball the colour, and I bake in 4 pans, but just one batch of the recipe in total unless you want the cake to be very tall, then I would make 2 batches. Thanks for following along with us.
the baking time seems very long. I live in Canada and most cakes bake at 350 F for only 30-40min…. are Australian ovens different? I actually tried this recipe and took it out 27min before the timer went off and it still seemed like I put it in the oven too long, a bit dry. just wondering if i’m doing something wrong here
I bake in one tall pan, so it takes a couple of hours. If you split it between pans, then it’s a lot less time. We just tend to bake in one because we like dense cakes here.
Hi Vanessa!
I am about to try to make the Rose cake for my Mom’s 69th Birthday
I just read that it is ok to bake the cake a day or two in advance but I was wondering if I could the same with the buttercream and if so, if I should leave it in the fridge or room temperature would be ok?
Finally, can the chocolate modelling be done in advance too and once the Rose Cake is done, what should I do to make sure it does not dry out until it’s eaten?
modelling chocolate can be kept at room temp for months. The others can be a day or so, and only in the fridge if it’s hot.
Is this cake suitable for a wedding cake?
sure is.
Hi Vanessa, thank you so much for your tutorials. I really enjoy them.
Today I tried this recipe and I’ve got my cake sunk down in the middle. It’s still cooling so hopefully it won’t sink down any further. Any ideas of what I did wrong?
Most likely overbeating, or taking it out before it’s fully done.
Hi.. Can u tell me a substitute for sour cream cozy we don’t get it here in the place where I live.. Please help
yogurt works as well.
Hi Vanessa I am a huge fan if your recipes and make your chocolate mud cake religiously and live it and have no problems. However with this vanilla cake I can’t seem to get it right. It seems to be extremely dense and not cooked through properly. I freeze the cakes and have converted your measurements form Australian cups to UK grams. Any ideas on where I may be going wrong?..
Warm regards
Jude
Hey! Try baking it in two 7″ pans, and you will get a 5″ tall cake overall. In one pan it does take quite a while. This is the dense, almost pound cake, so cooking times can be long.
Can I use whole milk?
sure can!
Hi Vanessa, I want to use this recipe to make a Black Forest Cake for Oktoberfest. I was thinking I will make two batches of this cake (one vanilla, one choc) and stack the layers. Any ideas how high this cake would likely end up? And how many people it would feed?
Thank you!
I would use a different chocolate cake recipe, make a mud cake, as this in chocolate is okay, but not fabulous. The height depends on the size of the pans, but if you baked them both in two 7″ pans, so 4 pans in total, you would have a 5″ high cake after fillings. That would feed 18-30 people, depending on if it’s dessert or coffee portions.