Baking Dessert

Vanilla butter cake

Name: Basic vanilla butter cake recipe
Yield: 8
Ingredients: 250g plain flour; 220g caster sugar; 3 tsp baking powder; 180g unsalted butter, melted and cooled; 125ml milk; 2 large eggs, at room temperature; 2 tsp vanilla extract; 125g unsalted butter, softened; 180g icing sugar mixture; 1 tsp vanilla bean paste

1 rating

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by Emelia Jackson

CHEF

Aug 04, 2025

"A truly simple melt-and-mix cake that yields beautiful, tender results. Everyone should have a simple vanilla cake in their baking arsenal, and this one is easy enough for even the beginner baker to master. A few tips to set you up for success: this is cooked at a lower temperature than you might expect – we don’t want too much browning, and a lower temperature means less doming on your finished cake." – Emelia Jackson

1 2/3 cups (250g) Woolworths Essentials Plain Flour
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 tsp baking powder
180g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup (125ml) milk, at room temperature
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract

Vanilla buttercream

125g unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups (180g) icing sugar mixture
1 tsp vanilla bean paste

Method

1.

Preheat oven to 170°C/150°C fan-forced. Grease base and sides of a 20cm square cake pan and line with baking paper.
2.

Place the flour, sugar, baking powder and 1/2 tsp fine salt in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Add the remaining ingredients to a large jug and whisk until smooth. Pour into the flour mixture and stir until just combined.
3.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean. Cool cake in pan for 20 minutes before inverting onto a lined wire rack to cool completely.
4.

For the icing, whisk the butter in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until pale. Add sugar, vanilla and a pinch of fine salt, and whisk until combined. Top cooled cake with luscious swirls of buttercream (a flourish of sprinkles is always nice, too).

Review 1

Recipe Notes

It’s important that the wet ingredients are all at room temperature. If you add cold milk or eggs into the melted butter, the butter will set and not combine as evenly throughout the cake, leaving you with large air pockets.