<p>Any great and brilliant recipes out there?? I have to make one for someone who loves it on their birthday and it seems to be sort of tricky to do it well.</p>
<p>This is my Grandma’s recipe and one of my aunts swears it’s the reason my uncle married her. There are quite a few steps but it’s not difficult to make.</p>
<p>3 cups sifted flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter or shortening
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
5 egg whites</p>
<p>Sift the flour and measure
Add baking powder and salt
Sift the mixture 3 times
Cream the butter and add sugar gradually, creaming until light.
Add the flour and mix gradually with milk in small amouts beating after each addition.
Add vanilla.
Beat egg whites until they stand in moist peaks. Then fold them in well.</p>
<p>Bake in 2 or 3 round cake pans at 375 for 20-30 minutes.</p>
<p>Get yourself a copy of The Cake Bible. The white cake in there is perfect and if you read the book there are lots of things you can do with it by way of frosting, filling, etc.</p>
<p>The best white cakes I’ve ever had I made myself using the recipes in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book The Cake Bible. It is aptly named. She has two: White Velvet Butter Cake and White Chocolate Whisper Cake. She has a different method of mixing that really makes a difference.</p>
<p>Her recipes all use cake flour, superfine sugar, and real butter. I wouldn’t use anything else. Here is the White Velvet Butter Cake (Please pardon my interjections, but I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to this, and the devil is indeed in the details!)</p>
<p>4 1/2 large egg whites (4 full fluid ounces)
1 cup whole milk
2 1/4 tsp vanilla
3 cups sifted cake flour (You know to sift the flour into the dry measure and swipe a spatula across the top to level it, right? 
)
1 1/2 cups sugar, preferably superfine (comes in a box)
1 tablespoon plus 1 tsp baking powder (make sure it is reasonably fresh)
3/4 tsp salt
12 tablespoons (6 oz) softened unsalted butter</p>
<p>Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two 9 inch cake pans: grease, fit with waxed or parchment paper rounds on the bottom, regrease and flour. Or use Baker’s Joy. (You’ll get better results if you use straight-sided pans.)</p>
<p>Light combine egg whites, 1/4 cup milk and vanilla in a bowl.</p>
<p>In a large mixing bowl combine dry ingredients and mix on low speed 30 seconds to blend. Add the butter and remaining 3/4 cup of milk. Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened, then increase speed to medium (high if using a hand mixer) and beat for 1 1/2 minutes to develop cake structure. Scrape down the sides. Ad the egg/milk mixture in 3 additions, beating for 20 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the sides as necessary. </p>
<p>Scrape the batter into prepared pans and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake 25-35 minutes on middle shelf of oven until a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the top springs back when pressed lightly in the center. *The cake should start to shrink back from the sides of the pan only after it is removed from the oven! *</p>
<p>Cool on racks in pans for 10 minutes, then loosen sides with a small knife and invert onto greased racks. Reinvert so top side is up to avoid splitting. (To get the highest, most even layers, use magicake strips.)</p>
<p>Cross posted with lololu! My original advice was : Just get the book! :D</p>
<p>Just another note on the subject of cakes: even if you only bake a layer cake once or twice a year, it is worth it to get some decent cake pans and the Magicake strips. You can go to a craft store such as Michael’s and find them in the Wilton section. (There are fancier ones out there, but those will do just fine.) Those two things make a huge difference, because the layers come out with straight, even sides, and the top is flat, rather than domed. The finished product is MUCH easier to frost and looks MUCH better.</p>
<p>Gosh, I wish I ate cake!!!</p>
<p>Can you get away with baking an angel food mix? You only have to add water and it is much healthier. Could serve with the last of summer’s berries and a little whipped cream!</p>
<p>If you are going to eat cake, make it the real thing. The point is not to “get away with” as little work as possible, the point is to make a great cake. Otherwise, just go to a bakery.</p>
<p>Sorry. I warned everyone that I am a fanatic. :)</p>
<p>Sorry! Everyone in our extended family loves the angel food cake especially my father -no one feels cheated. The reason I said get away with is because of it not being traditional white cake.</p>
<p>Well, if you like angel food cake, I suggest you get a copy of The Cake Bible and…:)</p>
<p>Seriously, she has a recipe for chocolate angel food cake that is simply divine!</p>
<p>The key to the best white cake recipe I have is the cake flour (comes in a box) and sifting. The fine sugar helps too. It makes huge difference. You would be surprised.</p>
<p>As a fellow cake lover - the first time I made a “box” cake (in my late 30’s) I felt guilty, and I am not that old (<50). Most of my friends have only made box cakes and call them homemade lol.</p>
<p>PS - My niece works for Wilton corporate and is also a cake fanatic :)</p>
<p>When I was very young, I loved applesauce cake and would ask for it every year for my birthday. My mother would always make it. One year, my parents bought me a white birthday cake from our local bakery and I was hooked! From then on, they bought one for me every year. I miss my white cakes! I miss Thornhill’s Bakery! The recipes here sound tasty but, I’m tired of cooking and baking after all these years. I just want someone else to do it for me. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for posting these recipes (with notes). I am now totally jonesing for one of these and may be off to the store to buy ingredients I’m missing.</p>
<p>I am so susceptible to CC Parent Cafe threads. I swear. I want a Longchamp tote. I crave a deal of the day each time I read that thread and hied myself over to Lands End and caught their summer sale. And just browsing the Trader’s Joe thread sends me shopping.</p>
<p>Once you have made your white cake, I would brush the layers with a syrup made with Framboise (the real thing only, not that red glop) and frost it with Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Neoclassical Raspberry Buttercream. </p>
<p>Now THAT’S a cake! </p>
<p>I’m sorry. I’m going to go away now. :D</p>
<p>I love white cake. One with almond is also good.</p>
<p>Madbean, I can relate! Every time I go to Marshalls or TJ Maxx, I look for a longchamps bag. I love this post and the “deal of the day”. I am now going to purchase this cake book.</p>
<p>Thanks ECmotherx2. Maybe we should start a CC support group thread. And I notice that I mistyped Trader Joe’s. D’oh! My S had a teacher in middle school who called it Trader’s Joe which we somehow all picked up as a joke… only now it’s slipping out in public. For shame!</p>
<p>consolation, care to share the raspberry buttercream recipe?</p>
<p>consolation, are you my sister-in-law? I like the Cake Bible, but she insists on improving my mother’s devil’s food cake recipe with Birnbaum’s mixing method. It’s good, but it’s not the perfect devil’s food cake anymore.</p>
<p>Consolation, I knew I could count on you to back me up about the Cake Bible – this book is cake porn. </p>
<p>Take a look at Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe for White Lilac Nostalgia – White Velvet Butter Cake, Raspberry Mousseline in the middle and White Chocolate Buttercream outside. You can skip the crytallized lilacs, although I have done them on a wedding cake and it was Devine!</p>
<p>I use a recipe I found on the King Arthur’s cake flour box. My customers love it as do my family members! :). Recipe is on their website as well.</p>
<p>What’s a white cake?? I would love to know!</p>