Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make my favorite white cake completely from scratch.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers! So this recipe video is actually long overdue.
This white cake recipe has been on my
blog for at least a year now. It has over a hundred five-star ratings and I
thought it was about time I make a video to show you exactly how to make it. Now
to get started you're going to preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and
you're going to want to grab a large mixing bowl.
I'm going to be using an electric hand mixer for this recipe today, but if you have a stand mixer that
will work perfectly as well. I usually use my stand mixer actually for this
recipe. Now the first thing we're going to add to our mixing bowl is 6
tablespoons of unsalted butter and you want this to be softened. We're going to
use our electric mixer to just beat this butter until it's nice and creamy.
With this mixer that only takes a second. N ow the next thing you're going to need is 2/3
cup of a neutral oil. So I like to use canola oil. Vegetable oil oil would also be fine.
Next we'll be adding our sugar. We are only using granulated sugar for
this recipe to keep that cake nice and white. So no brown sugar. You're going to
need 2 cups. Now use your mixer again to beat everything's better until it's completely combined.
I just want to pause real quickly to show you. So you can see
right now you still have some visible lumps of butter. You want to keep mixing
until you can't really distinguish the butter from the other ingredients.
Everything should be really well combined.
So of course we need to flavor this cake and we'll be using vanilla extract to do
that. You'll need 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.
I really recommend, if you can, getting your hands on a clear vanilla extract.
Clear vanilla is always imitation vanilla. That's okay for this recipe
because it gives you a good flavor and it gives you a very white cake. If you
use regular vanilla your cake will still be pretty white but the vanilla can tend to tint it a little bit brown.
And we'll stir this in briefly.
Just gonna use my spatula really fast just to manually stir everything
together. Make sure everything that's on the sides and bottom of the bowl it's nicely incorporated.
We will set this aside and we are going to need to grab a
separate bowl for our flour. This recipe uses all-purpose flour and you are going
to need 2 and 2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour. We'll add 1
tablespoon of baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
Just stir everything together until completely combined. You can use a
spoon or you can use a whisk. A whisk would actually be preferable because it
breaks up any lumps that might be in the flour.
Alright so let's bring back our butter mixture and you are going to need to
measure out one cup of milk, and I'm using whole milk. Now ideally you should
set this out a little bit in advance, and it should be at room temperature, and all
of your ingredients should really be at room temperature for best results. So
what we're going to do now that we have our milk and our flour mixture is we are
going to alternate adding our flour mixture and our milk. I'm going to start
and end with a flour mixture. So add about 1/4 of this
in with my butter mixture.
We'll use our electric mixer again to stir the flour in. We're just going to
use low to medium speed until the flour mixture is just combined.
And then we'll add about 1/3 of our milk mixture.
Or just our milk there's no mixer there it's just milk.
And just keep alternating until you've added all of your flour and all of your milk.
Now use your spatula just to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl because you
want to make sure that all of that flour and milk are completely combined into the batter.
Okay so now we need our eggs. You will need 6 large eggs for this
recipe and ideally they should be at room temperature. Now we are only going
to be using the egg whites so we will divide all of these eggs.
Now whenever you are working with egg whites it's very important that you do not get any
yolk in here. You want to make sure you keep the yolk completely separate. If you
get even a little bit of yolk in with your whites you're going to need to toss
that; otherwise, your eggs won't whip to stiff peaks, which I'll show you in a minute.
So I always crack my eggs in one bowl and then I'll pour the white into
the bowl that I'm actually going to be whipping it in and this bowl needs to be
completely clean, completely dry, completely grease free.
We're going to whip these egg whites to stiff peaks. You're definitely going to want to use
an electric mixer for this. It would take forever to do by hand. And it's very
important that your beaters be completely clean and completely dry.
One thing I love about this mixer is it comes with two sets of beaters.
So when the first one is dirty from mixing everything together initially, I
just swap in the second pair.
So our egg whites look perfect here. They've increased in volume. They're thick,
white, fluffy. They hold their shape. If you pull a spatula through them, the
little peak that forms does not dissolve into itself, or fall over so we are going
to take this and add it to our cake batter.
And we'll add our egg whites all at once.
You do not want to use an electric mixer at this point, or you will
wayyy over beat your batter. You want to use a spatula and just gently fold the
cake batter and the egg whites together until they're completely combined.
Our egg whites are really delicate at this point. So if you stir everything, or you
over mix everything, you'll completely deflate them and then you won't have
that nice moist fluffy cake that we're aiming for.
Using egg whites is a great way to make the cake nice and fluffy, and since the egg whites are white it gives
the cake its nice white color, it's not tainted yellow by the yolks.
So you want to be gentle doing this but you do want to make sure that all of the ingredients
are completely incorporated and you have a pretty smooth batter when you're finished.
Now I'm going to be making a two layer eight inch round cake. So to
prepare these cake pans I'm just going to spray the sides with baking spray, and
make sure you use baking spray that contains flour.
So one of the scariest things for me about baking a cake is that moment when you go to invert it onto
your cooling rack and it doesn't just slide out. If your cake sticks to
the bottom of the pan you could have to start completely over. So my favorite way
to guarantee that your cake will not stick is to cut out rounds of parchment
paper and place these in the bottom of your baking pan.
And the easiest way to make these rounds, the way I do it; is I just pull out a piece of parchment paper. Place my
baking sheet on it. Trace around with a pencil, and then cut around the inside of that pencil
line, fits perfectly in the baking pan.
And then we'll just divide our cake batter evenly into our prepared pans.
I always struggle with this. I'm not good at evenly dividing the batter.
Okay that looks pretty even to me so we'll take
these over to our 350 degree Fahrenheit preheated oven where they are going to
need to bake for about 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the
center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs.
You'll let your cakes cool for about 15 minutes. Then run a knife along the inside of the cake and invert it onto a cooling rack.
And look how easily that comes out. No sticking whatsoever
because we used that parchment paper. Now your cake does have a little bit of a
golden crust around the outside. Don't worry. When you cut into it it should be
a nice pure white color. Now we're gonna let these cakes cool completely and then
we'll cover them with icing. Once your cake layers have cooled completely all
that's left to do is ice them. I am going to be frosting my cake today with my
American, or vanilla American buttercream.
I'll just top this off with a little vanilla frosting that I've colored
purple. I am using my Ateco 864 tip for this.
Alright once it's iced, it's time to dig in. I want to show you how beautiful and pure white this cake is on the inside.
And that is how you make the best white
cake recipe completely from scratch. I hope you guys enjoy today's recipe and
if you try it out please let me know what you think. I think you're going to
love how fluffy and moist and just all-around amazing this cake is. Alright
thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
This cake has such a nice crumb.