Layer cake recipe
A versatile layer cake recipe
Servings: 16
Equipment
- mixer
- 6 in cake pans
- kitchen scale
Ingredients
- 430 g all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 TBS baking powder
- 630 g sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened*
- 4 eggs, room temp**
- 395 g Buttermilk, room temp/slightly warm***
- 1.5 TBS flavored extract (vanilla, almond, cake batter, etc)
- 2 TBS Sour cream, room temp (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 330 degrees, check for accurate temp with an oven thermometer
- In a bowl combine buttermilk, flavored extract of your choice, sour cream if using, and room temp eggs. Mix to break up the eggs and combine.
- Add flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar to the bowl of your mixer.
- Add the softened butter and mix with your paddle attachment on the lowest setting on your stand mixer until it looks like coarse sand, about 1 minute.
- With your mixer on low, add around half of your wet ingredients. You really just want to add enough liquid so that everything is a little wet without forming a dough texture, it should resemble cake batter. Then turn it to medium and let it mix for 2 minutes. Set a timer and do not go over. This helps develop the structure of the cake, without over mixing.
- Scrape your bowl after the 2 minutes. With your mixer on low add the rest of your wet ingredients. Mix just until totally combined. About 15 seconds.
- Prepare your pans by spraying the sides and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
- Divide the batter evenly between 3, 6 inch pans. I like to do about 18 oz per 6 inch pan. There will be a little left over batter, I like to bake a bento cake with it.
- Smooth the batter so it’s flat in the pan, then cover with aluminum foil.
- Bake until done about 60 min. When the cake is done the sides will start to slightly pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean.
- Place on cooling rack, carefully remove foil.
- Let the cakes cool for about 15 min or until pans are cool enough to touch and remove them from pans to cool completely.
- Once cakes are totally cool I recommend wrapping in plastic wrap and freezing to decorate cake from frozen.****
Notes
*Butter can be softened by microwaving in short burst, do not melt it, if it melts set it back in the fridge to firm up some
**Eggs can be brought to room temp quicker by placing in warm water
***Buttermilk can be brought to room temp by microwaving
**** When freezing cakes make sure they are set on a flat surface with nothing on top until they are totally frozen, putting them on a flat baking sheet in the freezer works