My Favorite Cake with Kandy Shepherd

While this is my very favourite cake—it is not my recipe. The vanilla cake recipe is from my go-to recipe blog Recipe Tin Eats and is included in creator Nagi Maehashi’s best-selling cookbook Dinner.

 

It tastes wonderful and has the best texture of any cake I’ve made. I could say it keeps well, but in our house it doesn’t last long enough to test that claim!

 

Nagi’s recipe (link below) includes an excellent buttercream frosting. But I serve it with whipped thickened cream sweetened to taste with icing (powdered) sugar and a dash of vanilla extract and topped with fresh strawberries. (As in my photos.)

 

A few years ago I made this cake for my teenage niece’s birthday and taught her how to make it. Ever since, it has been the favourite cake for both her and her sister’s birthdays. It is for mine, too!

 

The recipe seems long, but each step is fully explained for a perfect result!

 

 

VANILLA CAKE

 

Ingredients

2 cups plain (all purpose) flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

4 large eggs at room temperature

1 ½ cups caster (superfine) sugar

115g / ½ cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1 cup full-fat milk

3 teaspoons vanilla extract, good quality

3 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil

 

Method

1 Preheat oven to 180˚C/350˚F (160˚fan) 20 minutes before starting the batter. Place oven shelf in the middle of your oven.

2 Grease two 20cm (8 inch) cake pans with butter, then line with baking (parchment) paper. (Nagi recommends it’s best to use a cake pan without a loose base.)

3 Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

4 Beat eggs for 30 seconds on medium fast speed (speed 6) on a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, or a hand beater.

5 With the beater still going, slowly pour the sugar in over 45 seconds.

6 Beat for 7 minutes on a higher speed (speed 8) until tripled in volume and white.

7 While egg mixture is beating, place butter and milk in a heatproof jug and microwave for 2 minutes on high to melt butter (or use stove).

8 When the egg mixture is whipped, add the flour in 3 batches, beating for 5 seconds on low speed (speed 1) in between each addition. Once all the flour is in, beat for another 5 to 10 seconds until you can’t see any flour, then stop beating the cake batter straight away.

9 Pour hot milk, vanilla and oil into the now empty flour bowl and combine.

10 Add about 1½ cups of the cake batter into the hot milk. Use a whisk to mix until smooth—you can be vigorous here. The mixture will look foaming.

11 Turn beater back to the low speed (speed 1) then pour the hot milk mixture into the cake batter over 15 seconds, then turn beater off.

12 Scrape down sides and base of bowl. Beat on the low speed (speed 1) for 10 seconds. The batter should now be smooth and pourable.

13 Pour the batter into the pans so both are equally filled (560g /20oz batter per pan).

14 Bang each cake pan on the counter 3 times to knock out big bubbles.

15 Place pans in oven and bake for 30 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean.

16 Remove from oven. Cool in pans for 15 minutes, then gently turn out onto cooling racks. If using for a layer cake, cool upside down as the slight dome will flatten perfectly.

17 Once cake layers are fully cool, top with frosting of your choice.

 

Here, I top the cake with whipped cream, topped with fresh, ripe strawberries, halved.

 

Using a stand or hand mixer on a medium speed, whip together 300ml of cold thickened/heavy cream, 1 tablespoon icing (powdered) sugar and ½ teaspoon of good quality vanilla extract for 3 to 4 minutes until soft peaks form. Stop whipping as soon as this happens or your cream can curdle and turn into butter! Spread in the centre and on the top of your completely cooled cake layers. Top with halved strawberries.

 

Sit back and wait for compliments—but don’t sit for too long for your slice, or the cake will all be gone!

 

Note: standard measuring cup and spoon sizes vary between countries. This recipe uses Australian standard cup of 250ml and tablespoon of 20ml, teaspoon 5ml. Advice is that using US and UK measures, shouldn’t make a difference in a recipe like this.

 

For extensive tips and hints, frosting recipe, alternative cake pan sizes and a video, head to Recipe Tin Eats

https://www.recipetineats.com/my-very-best-vanilla-cake/

 

 

Thank you to Nagi Maehashi for the recipe

Photos by Kandy Shepherd

Kandy Shepherd is a best-selling, award-winning author of contemporary romance. Her heartfelt, passionate stories are set in exciting locations around the world and are published in multiple languages. Kandy believes in love-at-first-sight and real-life romance—she and her husband of many years decided to spend their lives together after three days! She loves it when readers tell her that her books make them laugh and make them cry. Kandy lives near Sydney, Australia with her husband and numerous four-legged friends.

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Kandy Shepherd has a new book out this month:

Stuck with Her Impossible Ex

Out-back together?


When celebrity chef Jess’s ex appears at her cookbook signing, their history comes flooding back—the heartbreak and their once-forbidden attraction. 

Housekeeper’s daughter Jess hasn’t seen ranching heir Logan since their teenage plans to elope were thwarted by their families. Now the billionaire’s interest in her is strictly professional. But his business proposal has her returning to his remote outback estate! 

There Jess becomes wrapped up in Logan’s world anew, caught between the untold secrets of their past and their reigniting spark…

Buy on:

Amazon Kindle.       

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Aust.          

Amazon UK