Growing up, I have fond memories of my mom making the classic Hershey's Chocolate Cake recipe from the back of the cocoa powder container. It's certainly a recipe that I have gone to many times when making a chocolate cake (even though I love to make my own recipe up quite often!). Knowing that my daddy loves his white cake, and that chocolate is not quite the same thing, and after looking at numerous white cake recipes and not really finding anything I liked all that well, I decided to go with my creative side again. What if I substituted the cocoa powder used in the Hershey's recipe with cake flour? Hmmm!!! So, once again, scrounging the cupboards, it came to my sad realization that, well... there wasn't really enough oil. I didn't want to add a lot of density to this recipe, so olive oil was out of the question. I measured out what measly amount was left. 1/8 of a cup... Well, that wasn't going to suffice for the 1/2 I needed. Why not try something new? So, the recipe that follows below is exactly what I did, and you know what? I was quite pleased with the cake portion of it! (I was pleased with the frosting as well, but I have to say that personally, with a white cake, I want a chocolate or other flavored frosting, and with a chocolate cake, I tend to like a white frosting. I think they provide a nice balance with one another, but as it wasn't my birthday, I decided to go with the options that I knew would make my dad's taste-buds the happiest!).
Classic White Cake1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1/8 cup oil
3/8 (or 6 tbs) melted butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract1 cup boiling water
Preheat oven to 350.
In a bowl, combine flour, cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a stand mixer, combine oil, butter, and sugar and mix for about two minutes (or until light and fluffy!). Add in eggs, milk, vanilla, and almond extracts and mix. On low, incorporate flour mixture into wet ingredients. Do not over mix, but allow to be blended. Add boiling water and slowly mix again just until mixture looks fully incorporated.Butter and flour two 8" or two 9" cake pans. Divide batter evenly between the two. Once oven has preheated, baking for 18-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean, but cake is not overdone (mine was done when I checked it at 18 minutes, but your oven may be quite different!).
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes on cooling racks before removing the cakes from the pans. (If you're not sure how to best remove cakes from cake pans, check out the first cake recipe Anna and I did back in February in "Party Time.") The cakes should rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes before frosting.
Almond Buttercream Frosting1/2 cup butter (room temp)
1/4 - 1/3 cup milk
1 - 2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 - 4 cups powdered sugar
In a stand mixer, beat butter and almond extract (until fluffy). Slowly alternate milk and powdered sugar until forms nice peaks and holds it's texture well or until desired texture is reached.
If you're a big frosting person, I would suggest using 3/4 cup butter and making an extra half of the recipe as this was just enough to frost the cake with a nice layer but not an abundant amount of frosting!If you're a chocolate person, then think about adding some cocoa powder in place of the powdered sugar.
Assemble the cake by placing a layer of frosting in the middle of the cake or be creative. Do whatever sounds best to you for the middle between the two cake layers. This cake had a thin layer of the white frosting as well as a layer of raspberry! Just a few ideas of what can be done with a white cake!
And yes, the egg really is balanced (it isn't balanced against anything and hasn't been photoshopped!)
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