How To : Bake a Soft and Moist Yellow Cake

For a baker, the most difficult recipe to achieve is the basic yellow cake. Any beginner would know the difficulty in NOT making a dry cake that tastes something like corn bread. I had almost abandoned the idea of making yellow cakes at home until I found this cake recipe which I modified as per my needs.This turned out a lot better than the yellow cake that I used to make in my initial days of baking!

Moist Yellow Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup of unsalted butter
2 cups of 10x finely ground sugar
4 eggs
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup of milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of (no color) butter extract

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans.
3. Cream butter until it becomes super soft.
4. Add sugar and continue to cream the mixture.
5. Add the eggs and beat all the ingredients until they are thoroughly mixed.
6. Add the all purpose flour and milk (alternating to creamed mixture), beginning and ending with flour.
7. Add vanilla and butter flavoring to mix.
8. Divide batter equally and pour into the cake pans.
9. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted.
10. Cool in pans for 5 – 10 minutes.

Tips:

• After pouring the batter into the pans, carefully drop the pans flat onto counter several times to ensure release of any air bubbles. This will help you have a more level cake.   
• Once the cake is cooled in the pan, remove and immediately wrap each layer in plastic wrap to seal in moisture. Cool completely on wire racks. 
• Do not use salted butter which gives the taste of corn bread to the cake.
• More butter makes the cake ultra soft but with additional calories.
• Adding 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil also helps.

      Additional tip for moistness:

• Combine 1 cup of sugar and 2 cups of water.
• Bring to boil and boil for approximately 3 minutes. Let cool.
• Pour liquid into a spray bottle.
• Unwrap first layer and if needed, level off the top of your cake.
• Place layer onto your dish. Take a straw and poke holes into the layer. Using your spray bottle, spray top of layer several times; enough to give it a little moisture. Be careful – Do not add too much.
• Add a layer of desired frosting to your bottom layer. Repeat on second and third layers.
• Frost the sides.

Do try this and let me know how it turned. If it indeed turned out MOIST!