When I say this recipe took me MONTHS to perfect, I mean it! This vanilla cake has the most soft, tender, melt-in-your mouth crumb and is bursting with vanilla flavour. A great base recipe that can be paired with literally any type of frosting and filling!
INGREDIENTS:
For this recipe I would highly recommend using gram measurements, especially for the flour for accurate results. It has a high fat/liquid ratio so slight adjustments to the quantities can throw off the balance of the cake 🙂
Vanilla Cake
- 2¼ cups (300 g) flour – regular all purpose (see note 1 if you want to use cake flour)
- ¼ cup (25 g) cornflour – also known as cornstarch
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt – omit if using salted butter
- ½ cup (113 g) unsalted butter – room temperature
- ½ cup (105 g) unflavoured vegetable oil – I use canola
- 1⅔ cups (332 g) white granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs – room temperature
- 1¼ tbsp vanilla essence/extract
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 1½ cups (337 g) buttermilk – room temperature. See note 3 below if using a homemade buttermilk substitute.
Bake at 165 °C (329°F) with the fan on. If your oven doesn’t have a fan option, then you will need to increase the baking temperature to 175°C (347°F).
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting (see note 2 below)
- 1½ cups (340 g) unsalted butter – room temperature
- 3 cups (375 g) icing sugar – also known as powdered sugar/confectioners sugar
- 1½ tsp vanilla essence/extract
- 1½ tbsp milk – heavy or whipping cream okay too
Note 1. You can use cake flour in replacement of the all purpose flour and cornstarch in this recipe (325g total required).
Note 2. This frosting is an American buttercream so is a ‘sweeter’ frosting, although my recipe does use a lot less icing sugar compared to a regular American buttercream. However, if you still want an even less sweet frosting, I’d recommend a Swiss meringue or French buttercream.
Note 3. I use store bought buttermilk which is thicker than a homemade substitute. For this recipe, because it uses a lot of buttermilk, a homemade substitute doesn’t give the same results. If you are using a homemade version you will need to reduce the amount of buttermilk to about 1 1/4 cups (275g).