Moist Vanilla Cake (Easy Homemade Layer Cake)

❤️Why you will love this recipe

• This classic vanilla cake recipe requires only the basic ingredients you would need to make a cake. The cake is made using self-raising flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla extract, and coupled with a pinch of salt and some baking powder, you get a wonderfully moist and fluffy, classic vanilla cake.
• The cake uses whole eggs, so there is no need to separate egg whites and egg yolks.
• The steps to make this vanilla layer cake are very easy, you just add the ingredients one after another and continue mixing until the batter is ready, before baking it.
• The vanilla cake texture is not only soft and moist, it is also pretty solid and so works beautifully for stacking into tiered cakes (wedding cakes) and carving, making this a perfect cake for weddings, birthdays and other special occasions.

For the cake:

• Self-raising flour + baking powder + salt - combine and sift all these ingredients before adding into the cake batter.
• Butter - I use salted butter. If you are using unsalted butter, increase the amount of salt used in the recipe.
• Granulated sugar (caster sugar) - for best results, use granulated sugar. Coarse sugar with leave your cake with sugar specks on the surface after baking.
• Eggs - Use whole eggs and choose large size.
• Milk - I used whole milk.
• Vanilla extract - use good quality extract for best results.

For the vanilla buttercream:

• Powdered sugar (Icing sugar) - sift the sugar before making the frosting to break any lumps.
• Butter - I use salted butter. The buttercream tastes much better with salted butter.
• Vanilla extract - this is to flavor the buttercream.
• Milk or heavy cream (optional) - this is optional and only required is your buttercream is too stiff.

🧾Substitution and variations

• If you do not have self raising flour, you can make your own by mixing baking powder to all purpose flour. For every 225g of all purpose flour, add one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Mix well and sift both 3 times before using. For 440g of all purpose flour (as per recipe card below), use 3 teaspoons of baking powder.
• Salted butter works best for this recipe, both for the cake and the buttercream. If you are using unsalted butter, you may need to increase the salt in the recipe.
• Vanilla extract can be substituted with vanilla bean paste in the exact same quantity. But do note that if you use vanilla bean paste for your buttercream, it may appear speckled.
• If you are not a fan of buttercream (American buttercream), you can frost the cake with swiss meringue buttercream or cream cheese frosting. You can also try the cake with chocolate icing or chocolate ganache.

Baking the cake

1. Start by adding butter and sugar into a large bowl. Make sure both the butter and sugar are at room temperature. Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until it's light and creamy. Add in the castor sugar and beat until the mixture turns light and fluffy (on medium speed). For the measurement given in the recipe below, this should take about 2 to 3 minutes. Scrap the sides of the bowl and the bottom of the bowl halfway through the creaming process to make sure there is no butter left on the sides of the bowl. 
2. After that, add the eggs in, one at a time. And with each addition, beat them well and make sure they are all incorporated before adding more into the vanilla batter. The next process is adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt) and milk into the creamed wet ingredients. Do it alternately, starting with about one-third of the flour mixture. Fold it in with a large spatula, followed by half of the milk. Repeat the process and finally end the last batch of flour. Make sure the flour is all well folded in before adding in the liquid.
3. And finally, add in the vanilla extract. Give the vanilla cake batter a good mix and pour it into prepared tins.
4. Bake these vanilla cakes for about 40 to 45 minutes at your normal baking temperature. Remove the cake layers from the oven and let them cool in the tins for about 5 minutes. Turn them over onto cooling rack (wire rack) to cool completely before decorating. For the recipe measure below, I made the moist vanilla layer cakes in two 7 inches round cake tins and layered them further with a knife after baking. You can also divide the batter into four 7 inches round cake tins and if you do, reduce the baking temperature to 17 to 20 minutes.

Frosting the cake

1. To assemble this awesomely moist and fluffy homemade vanilla cake, start by leveling and layering the cakes. Since I made mine in only 2 cake pans, I layered each tier into 2 (with a serrated knife) so that I got 4 layers of cake in total. See here for more tips on how to layer cakes.
2. Apply buttercream frosting between each cake layer and stack the layers up. Follow that by giving the vanilla layer cake a thin crumb coat. Place the crumb-coat frosted cake in the fridge for about 20 minutes for the buttercream crumb coat to set.
3. Remove from the fridge and apply the final layer of the vanilla frosting with your palette knife. Start with the top of the cake and move to the sides. For this design, it is not necessary to smooth frost the cake, so it is generally a very simple and quick buttercream cake decorating idea. Nevertheless, eyeball to make sure the icing is evenly applied and there are no parts of the cake that look bulging with icing.

Decorating the cake

• To complete the moist vanilla cake decoration, I randomly added simple rosettes in Wilton Burgundy and Rose Petal pink using star piping tip 21. The leaves were tinted with Wilton Juniper Green and piped with leaf tip 352. I completed the decoration with a buttercream pearl border, piped using round tip 12.

🍽️Serving & storage

• The cake can last at room temperature for a good 4 to 5 days. Keep it in an airtight container to prevent it from becoming dry.
• If you wish to keep the cake longer, refrigerate it. The cake should last for a good 2 weeks in the refrigerator. If not frosted, keep it wrapped in plastic wrap to retain its moisture.

💡Expert tips

• For best results, use room temperature ingredients. Make sure the butter and eggs are at room temperature. Using them straight out of the fridge can result in your cake batter curdling. If that happens (normally after you have added in the eggs), add flour in small increments until the batter is no more curdled before adding in the milk.  But bear in mind to not over mix the batter after adding in the flour for your cake with not be as soft as it should.
• Sift flour and baking powder at least twice. Sifting helps to aerate it which in turn helps the cake to rise well during baking.
• Make sure all the ingredients are measured accurately. It is highly advisable that you do not modify the quantity in your first try as that will not help if the cake does not turn out as it should.
• For a moist cake, the cake should be removed from the oven when a toothpick (or cake tester) inserted in the center or middle of the cake comes out without any wet batter sticking to it. In fact, ideally, there should be tiny crumbs sticking to it. If the toothpick or cake tester comes out entirely clean, the cake might be overbaked already.
• It is also important that the cake tins are well greased and floured. The cake tins can also be lined with parchment paper. But make sure they are well greased so that they are not stuck to the cake tins after baking.
• When dividing the cake batter between multiple cake tins, it is best to weigh the cake tins after filling the batter in to make sure the batter is consistently filled in each tin. This will ensure the cakes are all cooked uniformly.
• If you refrigerate the cake before decorating, make sure it comes back to room temperature before layering or carving. The cake tends to be crumbly when its straight out of the fridge but is perfectly soft and moist at room temperature.

💭FAQs