Funfetti, confetti, whatever you want to call it, white cake dotted with rainbow sprinkles is one of my favorite things on earth. Like, I logically know that sprinkles don’t qualify as a flavor, but that won’t keep me from saying that sprinkles are my favorite flavor. Seriously, add sprinkles to pretty much anything and I’ll love it. Those little pops of color are just so…happy. Is happiness a flavor?
I haven’t made many layer cakes in the last year—it’s hard to believe I used to make 10-20 a month!—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t fed my craving for rainbow sprinkles. Last summer’s Funfetti Cookie Cupcakes are one of my favorite recipes in a long time, as is this Funfetti Bundt Cake.
Like the traditional layer cake, this is a moist sour cream white cake positively loaded with rainbow sprinkles. Unlike the traditional cake, this batter takes exactly four minutes to mix; just dump everything in a bowl and let your electric mixer have at it until it’s impossibly smooth, thick and voluminous, then stir in 3/4 cup of rainbow sprinkles before baking.
Like most bundt cakes, this one takes its sweet time to bake and cool, but I promise your patience will be rewarded. Once your cake hits room temperature, pour on a glaze, scatter on some more sprinkles and slice it up! Funfetti Bundt Cake would be great for birthdays, picnics, holidays or any old time.
I know that restrictions are starting to loosen as vaccines becomes more available, but if you’re not attending gatherings that require a cake of this size, don’t worry, I’m not either. What that means is that I happen to know that this recipe halves well and can be baked in a loaf pan for your immediate pod or just yourself. I don’t know about you, but dipping into my own personal Funfetti cake over the course of a week sounds a lot like happiness to me.
Funfetti Bundt Cake
makes one 10-cup capacity bundt*
Cake:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 16 pieces
4 large egg whites, room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract or imitation butter extract (optional)
3/4 cup full-fat sour cream, room temperature
1/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
3/4 cup rainbow sprinkles (jimmies, not nonpareils)
Icing & Garnish:
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
2 tablespoons whole milk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
pinch of Kosher or sea salt
rainbow sprinkles (jimmies or nonpareils)
Place an oven rack in the center position. Preheat oven to 325F. Heavily grease a bundt pan with softened butter (or shortening) and dust well with flour. Set aside.
Make the cake. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, egg whites, vanilla, almond extract, sour cream and milk in a large mixing bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix on low for 30 seconds. Increase speed to medium and mix for 3 minutes. Batter will be thick. Use a silicone spatula or wooden spoon to fold rainbow sprinkles into batter.
Transfer batter to prepared pan and smooth the top with a silicone spatula or wooden spoon. Tap full pan on the counter five times to release any large air bubbles. Bake 65-75 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in several places comes out clean.
Let cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Run a thin, flexible knife around all exposed edges. Invert cake onto a cooling rack and let cake cool completely. Cake may be made up to a day in advance; it will keep double-wrapped in plastic wrap.
Make the icing. In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk together confectioners sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. Mixture should be very thick, but pourable. If it’s too thick, add more milk by the teaspoon up to 3 teaspoons (1 tablespoon); if it’s too thin, add more confectioners sugar in 2 tablespoon increments. Pour over cake. Scatter rainbow sprinkles on immediately. Let sit for 20 minutes to set. Move cake to a serving plate before slicing and serving.
Leftover cake will keep covered at room temperature for up to two days or in the refrigerator for up to five.
Note:
This recipe may be halved and baked in a parchment-lined 9×5-inch loaf pan. Start checking the cake for doneness at the 55 minute mark.
I try very hard to keep things simple around here. Recipes, techniques, flavors, everything. That doesn’t mean super easy or uncomplicated—just not over-complicated. No more steps or ingredients than absolutely necessary, you know?
That said, sometimes a simple recipe like this Vanilla Bean Bundt requires several tries, each with a different technique or ingredient, all resulting in…excellent cakes. Really.
Each one began with the same basic recipe that I’ve used for my 
The cake I love the most is #1, so it’s the one I’ve posted below. The seeds of one vanilla bean are whirled into the batter, and the leftover pod is used to make a syrup that is brushed onto the baked cake before icing is poured over the top. The syrup is the element that makes all the difference here—it keeps the cake from being even the slightest bit crumbly, gives it a subtle glossiness, and makes it so that you can smell its dreamy vanilla aroma within a 6 foot radius. Yes, really!
I also like that the pods in the recipe don’t go to waste. I’ve seen other bakers suggest using empty vanilla pods to make vanilla sugar, but how much vanilla sugar does anyone actually use? You could use them to make extract, I suppose, but that takes weeks or months. This way at least one of the pods is used directly in the cake. As for the second, let me know what you do with leftover vanilla pods. I’m interested!
For those of you wondering about the cost of this whole operation, I won’t lie to you: vanilla bean anything is pricey. I buy my vanilla beans at Costco and Sahadi’s, and they run about $6 apiece. You could use two tablespoons of vanilla bean paste (1 per pod) instead, but the paste is about $35 upfront. A single jar contains enough to make this cake four times though, so it’s worth the investment. Oh, and this is a warning that the dark color of the vanilla bean paste will affect the aesthetic outcome of the cake, but only slightly. It will still be absurdly delicious, as all vanilla bean things are.
Keep it simple, y’all.
I owe you an apology. The 
Sure, that cake is delicious—it’s cake!—but it’s not delicious enough to require four bowls, ample sifting, a whisk, a spatula, a mixer and whipped egg whites. Few things are.
After being asked to make a few 
Simpler and better is exactly what you’ll find with this new, improved White Cake recipe. This rich, tender, fine-crumbed cake is a one-bowl endeavor, and while it does require a mixer, you don’t have to sift anything or whip egg whites. I’m calling it a huge win.
This cake comes together differently than the others you’ll find on this site. Instead of the usual creaming method (creaming butter and sugar before adding eggs, dry ingredients and milk), this recipe is made using the reverse creaming method, which might be my new favorite way to make cakes. Let me walk you through the process.
Start by combining flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl—the only mixing bowl you’ll need for this recipe. Give those a good stir with a whisk or a low mixer before adding all your softened butter.
Next up, use your mixer to combine the two. This will take a few minutes and produce a rubbly, sandy-looking mixture. The purpose of doing this is to coat the flour with fat before adding the liquid ingredients. The butter creates a barrier that impedes gluten-development, producing a softer, more tender cake.
And speaking of gluten-development, the last two steps are adding liquid ingredients (egg whites, extracts, and buttermilk), which are what will activate the gluten in the flour. Mix just until combined before dividing the batter into two pans and baking.
Once the cake layers are cool, you may fill and frost them however you like. I kept it simple this time around with a white buttercream (just my vanilla buttercream with less vanilla) and went for the naked cake look.
Ooooh. Ahhhhh.
You’ll love this White Cake for its buttery vanilla-almond flavor, fine crumb, and did I mention it only requires one bowl?????!!!!!🙌😍💪🍰🎉 
It’s great on its own, but is also a wonderful blank slate for all sorts of applications. Feeling like 
Or maybe get brave and wild and do all three, because this White Cake is just that simple and just that good.
I’ll admit that my heart sank to my ankles when I was asked to make “something like” the Milk Bar Birthday Cake for a first birthday party a few weeks ago.
It’s not that I have anything against Christina Tosi or 
Long story short, I got it together, spent a lot of time looking at my copy of the 
I have little intention of making it again because who has that kind of time??? But I will make time for one element: the Funfetti crumb. It’s got all the buttery crunch you’d expect in a shortbread or crispy sugar cookie, but it’s as simple as making the crumb topping for a coffee cake. And it’s colorful and happy and just the tiniest bit salty. And, well, connect the (rainbow sprinkle) dots.
Double Funfetti Crumb Cake is exactly what it sounds like: tender sour cream Funfetti cake with a layer of Funfetti crumb baked on top. It’s the buttery, rainbow-speckled, no-cinnamon-allowed everyday coffee cake you didn’t know you wanted.
The cake is rich and dense, the crumb provides just the right amount of crisp-crunch, and the rainbow sprinkles (
What? We all know that person. We may not totally understand their tastes but we respect them, and now we can make extra-fun cake for them to show them how much we love them.
…this took a weird turn. Happy Friday, dear readers! Make yourself a cake this weekend!
I make a lot of cakes—a lot. In any given month, I make at least ten, plus any that are tested and posted on this blog. What can I say? I have friends who like to celebrate and like my cakes. I’m flattered.
Of course, this means that making cake—something that once only brought joy—can sometimes be a slog. I don’t necessarily mind when baking feels like work (because it is my work), but I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t wait to come home and bake layers after a long day of blogging and personal cheffing. The joy understandably gets a little lost when I’m making a double batch of vanilla layers at 11pm on a Tuesday.
But when inspiration strikes and I can be creative, it could be 4am and I’d be psyched to be baking. My roommate might not particularly like it, but I’d be in heaven.
Such was the case last month when I made a cake for a 
And so that request for a strawberry element somehow meshed with vanilla and chocolate and became 
Y’all. Y’ALL. This cake. It is a thing. A real undertaking. A project best done over the course of two days. The most intricate cake work that’s ever been on this blog (aside from the 
But I am also completely obsessed with it. I mean, what’s not to love about this checkerboard chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry interior and the ruffled tricolor buttercream exterior? It’s the most fun!
The cake layers are all made from one batter. Once it’s mixed together, it’s divided in thirds. One is left plain—that’s the vanilla layer. Another is spiked with freeze-dried strawberries, and the last with cocoa powder and melted chocolate.
They’re baked, cooled, evened…
…and then punched into rings and reassembled.
And layered in a specific order with thin layers of vanilla buttercream.
And then decorated in the most fun (and shockingly easy!) ruffle pattern. Or, you know, however you like.
When all is said and done and sliced and served, all your friends’ minds will be blown at your Neapolitan Cake prowess. As they freaking should be.
e2 bakes brooklyn 