Perfect Vanilla Layer Cake

The details

I’ve been sitting on my vanilla cake recipe for some time, and have finally decided to whip it out to celebrate my baby (kid???)’s 2nd birthday! This perfect vanilla layer cake is fluffy, moist, tender, open-crumbed, and all-around delicious. It stands up to the weight of buttercream and filling when layered but remains light in texture and flavor. Basically, it lives up to its name. It’s the perfect blank canvas to a fun filling or buttercream. Or keep it classic and stick with vanilla buttercream for a cake that pleases all.

My perfect vanilla layer cake is pictured here with passionfruit curd from my Passionfruit + Vanilla Bean Meringue Clouds and vanilla buttercream via Cake by Courtney colored with blue food gel. This passionfruit curd is a) amazingly good and b) so complementary to the sweet and simple flavor of vanilla. I couldn’t recommend this combination enough. As far as the buttercream, I know and love this recipe by Courtney Rich. She has an amazing array of cake and buttercream recipes on her website, and lots of amazing videos/tutorials for assembling layer cakes. I made an extra 1/2 recipe of her vanilla buttercream to make sure I had enough to pipe on this cake, and I ended up having some left over.

Pro tip–put leftover buttercream in an airtight container and freeze it–it will stay good for months in the freezer and can be easily thawed in a few hours when you wan to use it! I save all my leftover buttercreams for a rainy baking day.

If you want to go chocolate on the frosting, I recommend the fudgy chocolate frosting from my chocolate sheet cake recipe–simple double the recipe and it will be enough to cover and fill your cake. Make another 1/2 recipe if you want to pipe. It’s deeply chocolatey and just sooo smooth and creamy. It’s easily my favorite buttercream of all time.

Assembling Layer cakes: A breakdown

Assembling a layer cake can appear daunting but just comes down to a couple tricks! Here’s my step-by-step breakdown of what you need to know to assemble stable, clean-looking layer cakes that are also delicious.

1. Get prepped. Start with cake layers & buttercream that are room temperature. If you make your buttercream ahead of time (totally fine), allow it to come to room temp over the course of an hour or so before assembling your cake. Choose your cake stand, plate, or a cake round approximately the size of your cake layers. Clear out some space in your freezer for the cake to sit. Make sure you have a bench scraper & spatula. If you have a rotating cake stand, great, but it’s not required.
2. To help the cakes stick to whatever surface you’d like to put them on, I spread a little bit of buttercream on the base. If your cake has a significant dome, you can cut the rounded portion off with a serrated knife. I find that if I bake my layers at 325 degrees F (vs 350) there’s not a large dome that needs to be cut.
3. Gently lay your first cake layer on the surface & buttercream smear. Lay the cake top-down, so the domed side is against the base and the flat bottom is facing up.
4. Time to fill the cake. Two options: Use a filling or layer with extra buttercream. For a filling: using a piping bag and rounded tip, or just a plastic bag with the corner snipped, pipe your buttercream in a circle around the edge of the cake layer. This is to hold in your cake filling. Spoon out and spread your filling on the layer. If using buttercream, scoop out a generous portion with a spatula and spread it on in an even but thick layer. If buttercream is oozing out onto the sizes of the cake, that’s fine. You’ll smooth it down later.
5. Take your second cake layer and gently lay it down on top of the filling & buttercream, flat (bottom) side facing down and domed side facing up. So, the two flat sides will meet in the middle. Take care when laying down the cake to get it well lined up with the bottom layer–if you have to scoot the cake around it will throw off your filling. If you have more than 2 cake layers, repeat filling the cake and laying the top layer.
6. Time for the crumb coat! Don’t skip this step–it’s the key to a stable cake with no layers sliding around or getting all wonky!!! Using a spatula, spread some buttercream all along the sides of the cake. Using a bench scraper, scrape the buttercream until it’s in a smooth even layer that juuuust covers the cake–it is normal to still see cake layers under the frosting. Fill in spots as needed with additional frosting and scrape again if needed. Spoon some buttercream on top and using a spatula, smooth into an even, thin layer on top of the cake.
7. Take your cake (and base) and move the whole thing to your freezer. Allow to chill and harden for 15-30 minutes.
8. Take out your chilled cake. It will be firm and semi-frozen. Not to worry, this won’t dry out your cake or frosting. Using a spatula, spread another coat of buttercream on the sides & top of your cake, scraping with the bench scraper and spatula until it is as smooth as you want it to be.
9. Decorations! Pipe buttercream, add sprinkles, and use toppings as desired. Once your cake is completed, it can be stored in a cake box in the fridge, or if being served in the next several hours, at room temp in a cake box (preferred).
10. Enjoy your cake! You earned it!! See the video below for a demo of this process.

This construction-themed birthday cake is topped with chocolate crumbs (aka dirt) from Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar: A Cookbook. Piping with Wilton tip #1M. The diggers & candle are available on Amazon.

Similar Recipes

Love simple and well-done cakes? Try out my Rich + Fudgy Chocolate Sheet Cake.

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