The Cake Merchant

One Bowl Vanilla Cake with Quick Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

One Bowl Vanilla Cake-12

Keep it simple. It’s a wonderful life lesson that can also be applied to baking. Although cakes that take hours to prepare and lots of dishes to create can be worth the time and effort, there’s no point to them if they never get made. The “one day I’ll have the time to try that recipe” cakes have their place, but I guarantee that this one will get made again and again. And nobody will know that it’s a dump and stir recipe. It’s just as easy as a cake mix, but without all the chemicals.

This recipe comes from Piece of Cake, a book devoted entirely to one-bowl recipes. The only change I made was to pair it down from the original 9-inch variety to a 7-inch layer cake. For me, 7-inch cakes are the perfect size, since they don’t look diminutive, but aren’t too overwhelming for a small gathering. Plus, I just don’t get enough use out of my 7-inch pans.

Vanilla Cake

The vanilla cake recipes on this blog are piling up, mostly due to my slight obsession to find the perfect one. If you’ve never made a cake from scratch before, this is a great recipe to begin with. It’s almost foolproof, and frosting is also really quick and easy. Neither the cake nor the frosting require a stand mixer.

While this cake isn’t quite as light and fluffy as this one, it’s moist and full of vanilla flavor. If you prefer not to use the almond extract, you can leave it out. It doesn’t make the cake taste like almond, but just adds some nice depth.

Vanilla Cake

To finish it out, I used a few drops of Sky Blue food coloring to the frosting (although it turned out to be more of a mint green), piped some pink roses on the side, and topped it off with some white sanding sugar.

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One Bowl Vanilla Cake with Quick Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Yield: One 7-inch layer cake

Ingredients

    For the cake
  • 2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 large egg whites (120 grams), at room temperature
  • 2/3 cup (161 grams) milk
  • 5 1/2 tablespoons (78 grams) unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces
  • 2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon (3 ml) almond extract
    • For the frosting
  • 1/2 lb (226 grams) unsalted butter, softened but still cool
  • 1 jar (7 oz, 198 grams) marshmallow creme
  • 1 cup (125 grams) powdered sugar
  • 2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla extract
  • A couple of drops of Americolor Sky Blue food coloring (optional)

Instructions

    For the cake
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
  2. Grease two 7-inch baking pans and line them with parchment paper.
  3. In a large bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer), whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
  4. Add the egg whites, milk, butter, vanilla extract, and almond extract.
  5. With an electric mixer, beat the mixture on medium low speed, until combined.
  6. Turn up to high speed and beat for an additional 2 minutes. (If you are using a stand mixer, reduce this time to one minute).
  7. Divide the batter evenly between the 2 prepared pans (I used a scale to do this).
  8. Bake in a preheated oven for 28-34 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  9. Cool on wire racks for 10-15 minutes.
  10. Turn the cakes out of the pans onto the wire racks and cool completely.
    11. For the frosting
  11. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
  12. Add the marshmallow creme and beat until incorporated.
  13. With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar and beat until just incorporated.
  14. Turn the mixer on medium high and beat for an additional 1-2 minutes.
  15. Add the vanilla extract and beat until just combined.
  16. If you are going to add food coloring, add a couple of drops and beat until the color is mixed evenly throughout.
    17. To assemble the cake:
  17. Place one layer of the cake on a cake board.
  18. Place 1 cup of the frosting on top, and spread evenly with a palette knife.
  19. Place the second layer on top of the first.
  20. Place a generous scoop of frosting on the top of the cake, and spread evenly across the top of the cake.
  21. Work your way around the sides until the entire cake is covered with a thin layer of frosting. I find that a turntable is helpful when frosting a layer cake.
  22. Let the crumb coat set in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
  23. Once the crumb coat has set, spread a thicker layer of frosting on the top and sides of the crumb coat to create a smooth finish.
  24. Decorate the cake by piping with additional frosting or topping with sprinkles.
https://cakemerchant.com/2013/08/15/one-bowl-vanilla-cake-with-quick-vanilla-buttercream-frosting/

Notes:
Cake and frosting recipe adapted from Piece of Cake
For a two layer 9-inch cake, multiply the ingredients by 1.5
I used two of these 7-inch pans for this recipe.

Comments

  2. Your cake is simply gorgeous. I love pastel colors and you’re right, 7-inch cakes would be perfect. I wish I had that size pan! I only have the 6-inch.

    I feel like the “perfect” yellow cake is really elusive. I’ve only tried a couple and I do really like the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla cake but I’m no expert. I tend to gravitate towards chocolate all the time but yellow cakes are so beautiful, like this one.

    Reply

  4. Hi Natasha! How GORGEOUS your cake is! Simple cake shines through good ingredients and detail work! I’ve never made a real cake like this before. I hope to be able to make a cake for my kids’ birthday one day. Gotta start learning soon!

    Reply

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  10. Question…. When I measure out one cup of sugar it equals 200 g is the measurement or the weight off in the recipe?

    Reply

  17. Yellow cake was delicious! Frosting was way too sweet. Sugar whipped with sugar and more sugar! I prefer something less sweetish myself so I would try a different frosting (something more like a swiss buttercream).

    Reply

  18. I was so hoping for this recipe to turn out, but I tried it several ways and got incredibly flat layers both times. The first time I followed your directions exactly, even though it seemed incredibly odd to add the butter towards the end. The butter never incorporated and the batter was soupy. I figured I’d bake them anyways, thinking that the butter would likely just melt out the top. For round two, I creamed the butter and sugar first, added the eggs, milk and extracts and then the rest of the dry ingredients, like most other recipes I’ve worked with, and the consistency of the batter was much more cake-like. This batch rose better but still was flatter and denser than I’d like. It tasted great though! I’m just trying to rack my brain for where I went wrong but I really don’t know where. Super bummer!

    Regardless, your cake is beautiful! Love the colors. 🙂

    Reply

    • Yes I knew the order of the recipe (adding butter later) was wrong, but I tried it anyways. I ended up with lumpy batter that I knew would not cook correctly, so I put my mixing bowl over a pan of steaming water like a double boiler to heat the batter just enough to melt the butter and smooth out the batter. In the end that did work, but it could have been prevented. Frosting was REALLY sweet but I like the idea of marshmallow creme and will try that idea again.

      Reply

  19. Your cake looks beautiful! Could I do this in two 6” pans? Can you recommend how much I’d need to reduce the ingredients, or should be close enough to not worry about?

    Reply

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  49. I made this today, and the cake didn’t rise well at all. So, I tried again… and still they didn’t rise. So, now I have 4 very small layers…. Which will still be nice, hopefully… as long as the texture is still ok (the batter was yummy), but I’m wondering what I could have possibly done wrong. I’ve never had a cake just not rise like this. Anyone else have this problem? Thanks!

    Reply

    • It ended up being a huge flop. The cakes were so dense that it was actually difficult to cut through them. It was so heavy. The frosting turned out great though. I just wish I knew what went wrong.

      Reply

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