Mar 09, 2021, Updated Apr 19, 2023
The Best Vanilla Cake Recipe: Soft, Moist and Fluffy
I’ve spent my adult life chasing the perfect fluffy, moist vanilla cake recipe with a lofty, bouncy rise and a velvety soft and tender crumb. So many vanilla cake recipes are lacking, whether it’s a dense texture and coarse crumb, or a fluffy height but totally dry. After dozens, and I mean dozens, of repeated tests, I finally offer you what I consider my Best-Ever Vanilla Cake recipe. Perfect cake layers packed with warm vanilla flavor. Frost with the fluffiest vanilla buttercream frosting and be the hero of birthday cakes forever. Everything here from the ingredient list to baking time is anchored in baking science, with reason and testing behind every step. The result (I hope you’ll agree) is a foolproof, simple recipe that I dream will become your new go-to for every vanilla cake occasion.
How to Make Vanilla Cake: Gather the Ingredients
Cake Flour (or Cake & Pastry flour, as often found in Canada). Cake flour is lower in the toughening, gluten-forming proteins than all-purpose flour, which results in cakes with a finer texture and softer crumb. The secondary bleaching process used (different from all-purpose) allows the flour to absorb more liquid and therefore rise higher, making for a taller, fluffier cake.
TWO kinds of fat: room-temperature butter (How to Quickly Bring Ingredients to Room Temperature) is first blended into the dry ingredients to provide flavour and prevent gluten formation. I call it the shortbread method (more on that below). Then vegetable oil (any neutral-tasting oil will do) is also added with the liquid ingredients. Oil is liquid at room temperature and butter is solid. A cooled cake is therefore softer when oil is included.
Beaten egg whites to create the lofty, fluffy rise in conjunction with a moist, velvety crumb. Please don’t hit the browser back arrow. I know it’s annoying to beat whites. But trust me, the results are 100% worth it and I tried every other option under the sun.
Whole milk and sour cream: a combination of dairy added the perfect balance of fluffiness and richness. The sour cream adds a beautiful depth of flavour and creates a soft, moist crumb.
Both baking soda and baking powder: baking powder and egg whites are the key leaveners in this recipe. The baking soda is added primarily to tone down the tang of the sour cream for a perfectly subtle dairy cream flavour. The acid in the sour cream is neutralized by the alkaline baking soda (and this reaction creates rise) but there isn’t enough acid in the recipe to make that the only leavening.
4 Expert Tips for the Ultimate Moist Vanilla Cake
How to Make the Best Vanilla Cake
How to tell when the cake is done baking
First, gently press on the centre of the top. If your finger leaves a squishy, deep fingerprint close the oven and wait 2 more minutes. If your finger meets a bit of bouncy resistance, pull out your cooking thermometer. The temperature in the middle should register 190ºF (definitely no lower, and ideally not much higher). At this temperature the starch is set and makes for perfectly moist cake. If lower, put it back for another 1-2 minutes. As you continue upwards toward 212ºF (boiling point), the moisture rapidly turns to steam and is lost. The cake will not necessarily be evenly golden across the top depending on your oven. I have two ovens. My gas oven does not result in as much browning at the point the cake is done. It will, however, have started to pull away from edges of pan. The toothpick tester is not reliable. There may be moist crumbs when the cake is done (it’s a moist cake!), and I’ve had testers come out clean when still underbaked (because the wet batter is pulled off by the browned crust as you remove it from the cake). VERY IMPORTANT: recipe suggested baking time is an estimate as ovens vary in temperature accuracy, baking pans vary in heat conduction, opening the oven can add minutes, and if your ingredients are too cold, this also adds to baking time. Also if one pan has more batter than the other, it will take longer. Using a thermometer every time is a simple way to take out the stress and guesswork.
The above photo represents a sampling of just one week’s testing. Multiply that by several weeks and that’s how many test batches I’ve done. The winner is the fourth from the top. Moist AND fluffy! If you love this, you’re gonna love my Moist Chocolate Cake (it’s my #1 most popular recipe for a reason). You must also try my ultimate Moist Vanilla Cupcakes recipe, which uses a true reverse creaming method. Here’s my favourite Easy 5-Minute Fluffy Vanilla Frosting recipe or my go-to Fluffy Chocolate Frosting.
