Description
My personal recipe for hacking a Vanilla Cake Mix.
Ingredients
For the Layer CAKE
- One box Betty Crocker Super Moist French Vanilla Cake Mix
- 1 cup Buttermilk
- Grapeseed Oil
- 3 eggs
- 2 tsp Butter Flavor Extract
For the Layer Cake FROSTING
- 3 sticks or 345 grams of salted butter
- 6 cups or 750 grams of powdered sugar
- 2 tsp flavoring. I used butter extract in this recipe.
- Up to 1/4 cup milk to thin as needed
- Food color if using. I used one small dab of Royal Blue by Wilton and got this lovely pale green. Not exactly what I was going for, but very pretty.
Instructions
For the Layer CAKE
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Make sure all ingredients are room temperature.
- Mix buttermilk and oil until well combined.
- Mix in Butter extract.
- Add Cake Mix.
- With mixer on low, add eggs one at a time making sure to combine each before adding the next.
- Run mixer on medium for a full 2 minutes once everything is in. The mix time is key to a successful box mix.
- Divide Cake batter evenly across prepared cake pans. About 330 grams per pan.
- If baking 6″ pans, bake cakes 28-32 minutes or until done. Mine are done at 30 minutes. If baking in a different pan, follow the instructions on the box.
- Allow cakes to cool in pans on cooling racks for 10 minutes.
- Once cool, remove cakes from pans and allow them to cool completely before decorating.
For the American Buttercream Frosting:
- Whip the room temperature (67-68 degrees) butter until smooth.
- Add flavoring while butter is whipping.
- Add sifted powdered sugar in two additions whipping thoroughly in between each addition.
- Add milk in 1 tablespoon increment until frosting is a spreadable consistency. It varies due to climate and temperatures, so add in small additions.
Notes
Here are the big secrets about making the cake using my method:
- Use buttermilk instead of water.
- Use Grapeseed Oil for the Oil
- Add the butter extract for flavoring instead of vanilla. It already has vanilla flavor. We don’t need to add anymore vanilla, but the butter flavor really adds.
I used a food scale to divide my batter at about 330 grams per pan, but you can put about a cup in each pan and then even it out from there.
For the Frosting:
Please note that this tiny cake uses a LOT of frosting. To be honest, I think it actually needs more. I had a little trouble smoothing the frosting how I wanted on the cold cake, and I think it’s because my decorative layer was too thin. My crumb coat was also quite thin. So the next go round, I will go up on the amount of frosting I make. This still made a very nice cake! But let’s see how it is to decorate with a thicker layer of frosting the next go around. Also, I have a full post and video on making American Buttercream, so I will include that as link for you by clicking here.