White Cake with Buttercream Frosting

I made this cake at the request of my boss – in honor of her son’s birthday.

ingredients.

12 T. butter, softened
1 ½ c. sugar
2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
6 large egg whites (¾ c.)
¾ c. milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 (9-inch) diameter or 9 x 9 x 1 ½-inch deep layer pans, buttered and bottoms lined with parchment or waxed paper

directions.

Set a rack at the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.
Stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Combine egg whites, milk and vanilla. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to butter mixture then add half the milk mixture.
Continue to alternate beginning and ending with flour mixture. Scrape bowl and beater often. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake cakes about 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean.
Cool in pan on a rack for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a rack, remove paper and let cool completely.

I increased the ingredients by one and one half and used two square pans. I was going for thicker layers that would be easy to split.

Primarily out of laziness I cooled the layers completely in the pan. Then I shoved both pans into the freezer (covered, of course), and let them freeze for a few days – until I was ready to frost.

The layers easily came out of the pans with the help of a butter knife. Splitting the layers is a lot easier when the cake is frozen. I was able to carefully control my knife as I sawed them in half.

I used a strawberry buttercream frosting for the filling. I made one recipe of strawberry buttercream frosting but before adding the strawberry divided the frosting into one-third and two-thirds. I saved two-thirds of the buttercream frosting for the outside of the cake, and mixed one-third of the frosting with one cup of strawberries. (Out of laziness I did not puree – I would not recommend skipping the step of pureeing the strawberries. The filling didn’t look very uniform with big chunks of strawberry separating themselves from the buttercream frosting.)

Two days after my boss cut into this cake, she brought me a piece. It was still moist! I shared it with one of my coworkers the same day I brought in my Peanut Butter Cream Pie. After trying both, he advised me to quit and open up my own bakery.

This cake is best when you’ve let it sit at room temperature for a while.

Recipe rating: 