What’s the Best Vanilla Cake Recipe on the Internet?

We tested four very popular vanilla cake recipes to find our favorite

As a person with a savory tooth, I do not often eat cake. However, I am also a Leo. I don’t align very much with that analysis, save for one big exception: I treat my birthday as though it’s basically a national holiday, and I want everyone in my life to treat their birthdays similarly, to briefly indulge in the fantasy of being the center of the entire universe. A day — okay, if I’m honest, a week — of celebrating at this magnitude deserves a good cake. My preference? A flavor profile that’s on the lighter side, which is to say, vanilla cake, ideally with a frosting that’s fluffy and not too sweet.

To find one that might meet my specifications, I scoured Google results and put four popular, highly ranking vanilla cake recipes to the test. Each of them involved a different technique. A recipe using cake flour promised a fluffy crumb, while one that called for whipped eggs guaranteed lift and a light texture. Three of these recipes offered frosting recipes as well, all of them basic American buttercream. I made extra to frost the one that didn’t. When comparing the cakes, I looked for a crumb that was moist and nicely flavored; I wanted a cake that was pleasant to eat on its own, but also able to stand up to a sweet frosting. While frosting wasn’t my priority during judging — I know I prefer whipped cream or cream cheese frosting — I did take note of whether any of these basic buttercreams was better than another.

Here’s what I found about which vanilla cake is worthy of my (and your) next big birthday celebration.

Vanilla Cake Recipe

John Kanell, Preppy Kitchen

The technique: Creamed eggs and sugar; buttermilk and baking powder for leavening

This cake from Preppy Kitchen was pretty much what I expected to make when I embarked on this challenge. It takes the classic approach of creaming softened butter and sugar together in a stand mixer before adding eggs and the dry ingredients. Where the other recipes call for milk, this one calls for buttermilk, which suggested to me the potential for better flavor and a more moist texture. Its frosting is a classic American buttercream, made with softened butter, powdered sugar, and milk to thin it out.

This recipe resulted in a dense but moist cake with a sweet but balanced flavor. Its texture was slightly crumblier than the other cakes and it felt more buttery. Its surface baked to an even golden brown with a pretty flat top. Because of its somewhat crumbly texture, I had to handle this one more carefully than the others. With the two rounds assembled into a layer cake, it reminded me of all the good, homemade vanilla cakes I’ve had in my life. The American buttercream frosting contributes to that homey vibe, though to be honest, I find it too rich and thick, especially with this cake. Still, I think that’s what most people are looking for. It’s a familiar and nostalgic cake.

My Very Best Vanilla Cake

Nagi Maehashi, RecipeTin Eats

The technique: Whipped eggs and hot milk

RecipeTin Eats has the top Google result for vanilla cake, with thousands of glowing reviews. My cake preferences skew toward the light and less-sweet side, so I was curious to try this recipe, which takes inspiration from Japanese sponge cake. Accordingly, you first whip eggs into an airy, white mixture. Then, the instructions get a little finnicky and potentially confusing. Taking cues from hot milk cake — which uses a technique that creates a tall cake with a moist, fine crumb — you warm butter and milk until the butter is melted. To this, you add some of the egg batter. Then, you pour the milk mixture into the rest of the egg batter and beat it until it’s smooth.

Do all those steps right, and you’re rewarded. This cake gains an impressive level of lift in the oven, emerging tall and light with a spongy, uniform texture. The layers baked beautifully smooth and golden, with a fine but airy crumb, and had a sturdiness that made them easy to handle. This recipe also calls for a standard American buttercream, but compared to the previous cake, I felt that this one had a more restrained sweetness that better balanced the sugary frosting. However, I think I’d prefer this cake’s slightly drier, spongy texture with whipped cream frosting and fresh berries to a buttery frosting.

Easy Vanilla Cake Recipe

Sapphire Bang, Allrecipes

The technique: A single-bowl recipe that doesn’t require a stand mixer

This was the simplest of the four cake recipes. You don’t have to separate dry ingredients from wet, just dump everything into one bowl. Then you mix by hand or with a hand mixer and pour the batter into a single cake pan. You don’t need to do much planning for this one because it calls for vegetable oil instead of softened butter. All of that makes this an approachable cake recipe, especially for beginners.

Though this is an easy cake to make, I found the timing somewhat tricky. Since all of the batter goes into one pan, the cake ends up thicker than any of the others and therefore takes longer to bake. (I cut it in half to make a layer cake and had to even out the domed top as well.) The recipe calls for about an hour in the oven, but I had to add about an additional 20 minutes for the center of the cake to bake through. This meant that the bottom of my cake got browner and crustier than I would have liked. If I were to make this again, I’d divide it into two pans and cut the baking time.

Despite this recipe’s high Google ranking, it has a middling rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, with complaints that the cake is too dense. Unfortunately, I had to agree with that assessment: Compared to the other cakes, this one was dry and tough and seemed to go stale the fastest. With the thick, sweet buttercream, I found the finished cake a little cloying and heavy. While I’m guessing that kids at a birthday party wouldn’t be very harsh critics, I think you can do better.

Moist Vanilla Cake Using Cake Flour

Liz Marek, Sugar Geek Recipes

The technique: Reverse creaming; cake flour instead of all-purpose

Unlike the traditional creaming method, reverse creaming is named as such because it calls for adding softened butter to dry ingredients. You beat this mixture until it resembles chunky, wet sand, then add the wet ingredients. Proponents claim this approach yields a finer crumb and a sturdy cake with less of a domed shape. Of the four recipes I tried, this was the only one to specify cake flour, which is more finely milled and lower in protein than all-purpose flour, theoretically enabling a more tender texture. This recipe makes three layers of cake.

Having spent my life making traditionally creamed baked goods, doing the opposite felt unintuitive, especially since this recipe also calls for dividing the wet ingredients into two batches, which you add separately. I had to be more vigilant than usual to make sure I wasn’t messing up. But when I pulled the cake out of the oven, I understood why this technique has its champions. If the Allrecipes cake was a comfy cotton t-shirt, this was like a cozy chenille blanket. Overall, the crumb was fine and not heavy. And despite the fact it used the most butter and oil of the four, the cake didn’t feel oily.

Its flavor was lightly sweet — a nice foil to the frosting, which is a modified American buttercream. Before adding the butter, you whisk the powdered sugar with egg whites until the mixture is aerated. This frosting had the smoothest, lightest texture of the ones I tried. But while this approach is easier and less annoying than a meringue-based buttercream, I imagine that the use of raw, albeit pasteurized, egg whites might put some people off.

The winner: Sugar Geek Recipes

The Preppy Kitchen recipe should do the job for many people: It’s a tasty, no-frills cake that will meet most birthday expectations. However, sometimes it’s nice to learn that new-to-me techniques are actually worth the extra effort. That was the case with both the RecipeTin Eats and Sugar Geek recipes. To my taste, the Sugar Geek cake was ideal in both flavor and texture. Fluffy and not too sweet, it tasted like a sophisticated upgrade to the standard birthday cake, like something I’d get from a bakery. In other words, a cake fit for an indulgent, big-deal, main-character birthday.