Moist Vanilla Cake (Easy Homemade Layer Cake)

A round cake covered in white buttercream with pink and maroon rosettes and green leaves. Cake is on a white cake stand.

4.83 from 23 votes

Moist Vanilla Cake (Easy Homemade Layer Cake)

This is the best and moist vanilla cake I have tried so far. With a soft and moist yet solid texture that cuts so perfectly, this cake is perfect for stacking and carving.

Prep Time20

Cook Time45

Total Time1 5

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: 7 inches round cakes

Calories: 5094kcal

Author: Priya Maha

Ingredients

440 g self-raising flour
360 g butter
280 g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
240 ml milk
2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting (Buttercream)

600 g powdered sugar
300 g butter
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoon milk optional

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Preheat oven to 160 °Celsius. Prepare two 7 inches round baking trays (greased and floured).
Sieve flour, baking powder and salt and keep it aside.
In a clean bowl, cream the butter, and castor sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue beating until it is well incorporated and the mixture is all light and creamy.
Fold in the flour alternately with milk, starting and end with flour.
Finally, add the vanilla extract and mix well.
Pour cake batter into prepared tins and bake for about 40 to 45 minutes until the center of the cake springs back when pressed lightly. You can also use a toothpick to test if the cake is done. The toothpick should come out clean when inserted in the center of the cake.
Remove cakes from oven and let them rest in the tins for a few minutes before turning them over onto wire racks to cool completely.
To make the buttercream, add butter into a medium bowl. Cream it until soft.
Sift in the powdered sugar. Beat again until the mixture turns light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and mix until well combined.
If the icing appears too stiff, add some milk or cream. Start with small quantities of half or one teaspoon to avoid too much liquid in the buttercream.
To assemble the cake, level each cake layer into 2 and level the tops.
Apply buttercream frosting between each cake layer and stack the layers up.
Once the layers are stacked, give the whole 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.
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.
To complete the moist vanilla cake decoration, randomly pipe some simple rosettes in Wilton Burgundy and Rose Petal pink using star piping tip 21. For the leaves, tint some buttercream with Wilton Juniper Green and pipe with leaf tip 352. To complete the decoration, pipe a pearl border using round tip 12.

Notes

- 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 or your cake with not be as soft as it should.

- Sift flour and baking powder before using. Sifting helps to aerate the flour which in turn helps the cake to rise well during baking.

- Make sure 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 best results, use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients.

- Test the cake at least 5 minutes before the baking time is up. This will help ensure your cake is moist. 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 moist 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 the cakes 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 to bring it 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.

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