Yellow Layer Cake

Ingredients:
3 1/3 cup flour
1 1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
2 egg yolks*

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour or spray with baking spray two 8 inch round pans. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and egg yolks, mix until well combined. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking powder. Add the vanilla to the milk. Mixing continuously, add the flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with flour. Divide evenly into the prepared pans and bake about 40 minutes or until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean. Cool on wire rack, removing from the pans after about 5 minutes. Cool completely then ice.

*This cake is great with fluffy white icing, which can help use up your leftover egg whites.

My thoughts:

This is a beautiful cake. Moist, flavorful, and rich. It is a perfect base for any icing or decoration.

12 Comments

  1. Oh how I LOVE poke cake as a kid. I remember the first time I tried it and could not figure out what made it taste that way.

  2. HA! That is so funny…I went to a party last night and the theme was 80’s. I wore a side ponytail, tight rolled my jeans, and cut out the neck of one of my t-shirts. We then watched Back to the Future. It was lots of fun!

  3. I love this cake!

    Paz

  4. We made this cake when I was little too! My mom used whipped cream as frosting (homemade). She also had an all strawberry version, using strawberry jello only, then topped it with cut up fresh strawberries. I liked that one too. What lovely memories you brought back for me.

  5. This is a lovely cake, Rachel, almost exactly the recipe used by my Southern Mammaw to make a Pineapple layer cake EVERY Friday that I can remember. The five yolks from her own hens always made the most golden of layers.

    She made three thin 9″ layers of it, drizzled the juice from a tall can of Del Monte crushed pineapple over each layer like sprinkling sherry on trifle, and then frosted the whole thing with 7-minute Frosting, like your wonderful Fluffy one.

    She then finger-squeezed all the pineapple into tiny clumps and set the little mounds all over the top of the cake—fancy decor for the Fifties.

    What a lovely memory.

    racheld from eGullet forums

    ps—the first direction is to cream “butter and eggs”–I do believe it must be “sugar”

  6. I must have done something wrong because when I used this recipe, my cake was not rich in flavor, nor was it very moist. I did not over cook it, and I consider myself to be a fairly experienced cake-maker, so I’m not sure where I went wrong. I felt that a lot of baking powder went in, so maybe that was the problem? I don’t know. The chocolate cream cheese icing was excellent, however!

  7. I’m sorry to hear that Mandy-others have made it and it turned out fine. Is it wet or humid when you made it? Sometimes that effects baking.

  8. Also: Mandy-I don’t think it was the baking powder, it is not much for such a large cake.

  9. Thanks, Rachel – I’m not really sure. It’s definitely not wet or humid here – I’m in Wisconsin and it’s cold and dry 🙂

  10. Hi Rachel, this is just what I'm looking for! I just want to confirm that it is 1 and 1/2 TABLEspoons of baking powder, and not teaspoons? I do live in a humid climate…

  11. Shipla-
    The recipe is correct. 1 1/2 teaspoons would be no where near leavening for a cake of this size.

  12. I made this for my daughter's birthday, and also used your fluffy frosting. It was great!