You’ve officially found the BEST Yellow Cake Recipe on the internet! My version is incredibly moist and SO easy with just one bowl (and no mixer!). Recipe includes a how-to video!
The BEST Yellow Cake Recipe
If you’ve been on the hunt for a good recipe for yellow cake, it’s time to call off the search. My yellow cake is soft, plush, has a fine light crumb, and is moist enough to melt in your mouth. It’s perfectly balanced with just the right amount of sweetness and vanilla flavor, and it’s SO easy to make (one bowl and no mixer!). Every box is checked with this one! ✅
This recipe is made similarly to my chocolate cake; it’s not traditional creaming and it’s not quite reverse creaming but is more similar to that method – only easier. Because of this method there is low risk of over-mixing (but it’s not impossible!). It’s great for beginner bakers and even easier than my vanilla cake.
Recently I’ve actually been favoring this cake over my vanilla recipe (though both are simple and delicious, this one is just fun and new for me!). You can even make this cake into cupcakes as I demonstrated earlier this week with my chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream post (I actually like them better than my classic vanilla cupcake recipe! 🤯).
What makes my recipe the best:
- A true one-bowl recipe 💛
- Incredibly moist and perfectly yellow without food coloring!
- Pairs well with pretty much any frosting, but chocolate fudge frosting is my personal favorite.
- NO mixer required (thanks to melted butter!).
- Can handle sprinkles for a bit of funfetti flair.
What You Need
Several carefully selected ingredients make this the best yellow cake recipe out there:
- Butter. I really recommend using European butter if you can; it will provide the best yellow color and flavor. If you can’t find that, regular butter will still work just fine!
- Oil. Using oil and butter makes for the most flavorful AND moist cake! I like to use canola oil.
- Cake flour. Cake flour provides the best crumb, though all-purpose can be substituted in a pinch (instructions below!). Make sure you know how to measure flour properly, or you could risk drying out this super moist cake.
- Eggs + egg yolks. Extra egg yolks add moisture, tenderness, and a beautiful yellow color.
- Sour cream. Where my vanilla cake uses buttermilk, this cake uses sour cream. While the two are similar, sour cream is a bit richer, which is exactly what this cake needs!
SAM’S TIP: This yellow cake recipe has a tendency to dome, so you will have to level your cakes before frosting. Do this after the cake has fully cooled!
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make It
- Combine the dry ingredients and sugar in a bowl, then stir in the melted butter and oil.
- Add the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla and stir until fully combined.
- Add the milk and stir until the batter is fully cohesive/uniform.
- Pour into your prepared cake pans and bake for 32-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with a few moist/fudgy crumbs.
- Let the cakes cool in their pans for 10-15 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Once cooled, level your cakes if needed. I find this cake tends to dome a bit and always need to level it — I’ll link to my leveler in the recipe card if you’re in need of one!
- Place one layer on your serving tray and top with frosting.
- Add another layer, top with frosting, and enjoy!
SAM’S TIP: If you notice holes/tunnels in your cake when you level it, don’t panic! You may have just mixed it a tad too much. Don’t worry, with this cake (unlike many others!) you usually can’t tell in the final texture or when you go to cut into it–it’s very forgiving! I was a bit too vigorous in my video trying to show how this yellow cake recipe can’t really be over-mixed that I left mine with tunnels, but the end result was still delicious melt-in-your-mouth perfection.
Frequently Asked Questions
There is not too much difference between a classic vanilla cake and a yellow cake, but since I’ve had readers specifically ask me for a recipe for yellow cake, I wanted to make one.
Compared to my vanilla cake recipe, my yellow cake recipe has a tighter crumb, a more intense yellow color (thanks to extra egg yolks and European butter), and uses more butter than oil. If you love my vanilla cake, definitely give this one a try!
You can, but keep in mind that cake flour will provide the best texture here. I include instructions for substituting all-purpose flour in the recipe notes.
My yellow cake recipe is designed to be incredibly moist, so if yours is dry, a mistake was most definitely made. The most likely reason is over-baking the cake (make sure your oven isn’t running hotter than it lets on!) or over-measuring your flour; I highly recommend using a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients to avoid this.
After so many reader requests for a recipe for yellow cake, I can’t wait to hear what you think about this one!
Enjoy!
Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
Yellow Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 cups (335 g) cake flour
- 2 ¼ cups (450 g) granulated sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ tsp table salt
- 12 Tablespoons (177 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until no longer warm to the touch see note
- ½ cup (118 ml) vegetable oil
- 1 cup (226 g) sour cream
- 2 large eggs + 2 large egg yolks
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ cup (118 ml) whole milk
- 1 batch chocolate fudge frosting
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C), grease two 8” round pans with baking spray and line the bottoms with rounds of parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine cake flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and whisk well to combine.3 cups (335 g) cake flour, 2 ¼ cups (450 g) granulated sugar, 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ¾ tsp table salt
- Add melted butter and vegetable oil and stir well until thoroughly combined.12 Tablespoons (177 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until no longer warm to the touch, ½ cup (118 ml) vegetable oil
- Add sour cream, eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla extract and stir well.1 cup (226 g) sour cream, 2 large eggs + 2 large egg yolks, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Stir in milk until completely combined. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula and stir again to ensure the batter is uniform.½ cup (118 ml) whole milk
- Divide into prepared 8” pans, and bake on 350F for 32-35 minutes/until the top springs back when lightly touched and a, toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs (not wet batter).
- Cool cakes in their pans for 10-15 minutes, then run a knife around the sides to loosen from the pan and carefully invert onto a cooling rack (don’t forget to remove the parchment bottoms) and allow to cool completely before decorating.
- These cakes typically bake up with a dome so I recommend leveling with a cake leveler (linked in equipment section above) or serrated knife before decorating.
- Decorate using desired frosting. I like to use my chocolate swiss meringue buttercream or chocolate fudge frosting.1 batch chocolate fudge frosting
Notes
Flour
Cake flour is best/recommended for this recipe, it yields the lightest, most tender crumb. However, you may substitute all-purpose flour in a pinch – you’ll need 2 ⅔ cup (335g)Butter
For a richer yellow color, I recommend using European-style butter if you can find it. It will also make the cake a bit more moist and tender. However, if you can’t find this style of butter or don’t have any on hand, don’t worry, regular butter will work just fine and I often make my yellow cake with regular butter, too!Storing
Cakes can be made a day in advance, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and stored at room temperature for 24 hours before assembling. Cakes may also be tightly wrapped and frozen for several weeks before or after assembly. Once cake is assembled, store at room temperature for up to three days in an airtight container (assuming your frosting can withstand room temperature for this long) or in the refrigerator for up to a week (note that the refrigerator will dry out the cake some).Cupcakes
This recipe will make approximately 31 cupcakes. Fill liners ⅔-¾ full and they will need to bake 17-19 minutes on 350F (175C).Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Elizabeth
Hi Sam! We love this recipe!
Question: I am making a 10” round version of this cake (I have made all of the conversions and everything, so no worries about that!), but I was wondering if lowering the temperature by 25* would affect anything other than the bake time (which no worries about that, I know to keep an eye on it).
I did a test cake, and it seemed to over caramelize on the sides and bottom, so I’m going to use cake strips next time, but was just curious about the temperature.
Thanks for any help!
Sam Merritt
Without having done it in a 10 inch pan I can’t say for sure how altering the temperature would affect the final product. If you do try it I would love to know how it turns out. 🙂
Mari
I was sure this would be good. I have followed 2 other recipies (the white cake and the triple chocolate cake) that came out near perfect, but this one was an all out disaster and a disappointment. Firstly, the description says no mixer needed, since the chocolate cake also said this I thought it would be the same, no. second, there are always notes on using room temp ingredients (like the butter note in this one) but nothing in here, so I used them cold. next, she always formulates her recipe to AP flour so beginners could use the recipe, however this one was different but gave a note on how to use AP for this, so I followed that. when I had the final batter, it tasted really good, but had lumps throughout (most likely the butter solidified), I hoped it would be fine and baked (~ 25 min; my oven runs extremely hot) it until it rose up and tested with the toothpick. it seemed extremely oily to me, but I went with it, however my assumption was right. the toothpick was clean, but when I came back after letting it cool for 15 minutes it had sank on its own. I flipped them out and saw that the bottom was completely uncooked. I put it back into the pan and cooked it for another 10 minutes, fearing the outside would become too dry, and nothing happened. I put foil tightly on it and baked for another 25 minutes. I was so tired that I left them overnight in their pans to cool. when I checked again it still wasn’t cooked. I cut out the insides since it was wasted time and the only thing that cooked was 1 ½ inches of the outside. when it was baking it smelled wonderful, however when I ate the outside edges, it was tasteless. I am completely taken a back by this turnout and although had I used a hand mixer and room temp ingredients, I still don’t think this could’ve turned out at all. too much eggs and way too much oil/butter.
This really sucks because this was supposed to be my redemption from last year’s yellow cake incident from somewhere else that was disgusting. I had a lot of hope in this, and strictly sticking to the directions for the other cakes turned out wonderful. Too bad.
Sam Merritt
Hi Mari! I’m sorry to hear this happened. It sounds like a lot went wrong here. 🙁 You are supposed to melt the butter and let it cool before adding it, not use cold butter. This is likely why you had so many lumps in the batter. 🙁 I use cake flour here because it simply provides a better texture for the cake. If your oven is running hot I would definitely recommend getting a thermometer and adjusting the temperature according. For example, if you know it runs 25 degrees F hotter than it should, just set the temperature to 25 degrees F lower than the recipe calls for. The high temperature would definitely cause your baking issues. If the oven was too hot it would have over-baked the outside of the cake, which will make it have no flavor, while at the same the center will not have baked. Were you able to see the video of me making it? This one should come together rather easily with a hand mixer. 🙁 I’m sorry this one didn’t turn out for you.
Mari
I did use melted butter, just not room temperature eggs, milk, sour cream, and flour. I followed the recipie instructions to the T and it still did this. I would love to blame my oven, but with the other cake recipes I have followed, it came out perfect every time. I’m glad you responded, hopefully you can add to the written directions like is on the other recipies to help out people who like to read the recipies, rather than watch a video.
Leslie
Delicious!!!!!!