Sometimes an easy birthday cake recipe is all you need to celebrate!
They can be so much tastier than the stuff you get at the store. And contrary to popular belief, baking a cake doesn’t take a ton of time to make.
With this simple recipe, you can make your own birthday cake recipe with meringue frosting that’s absolutely finger licking good.
Now, why meringue frosting instead of buttercream, which is the usual icing that goes on cake?
For one, meringue is absolutely delicious and a lot healthier for you than buttercream.
Also, you don’t have to add food coloring to it if you don’t want to!
Easy Birthday Cake Recipe With Meringue Icing
I find that the moist fluffiness of this cake recipe along with the velvety feel of meringue icing mixed together makes for one heck of a tasty bite.
Related: Easy Strawberry Cake
It’s a cake recipes that’s so easy to put together (to the point where you could learn it by heart) and will satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth!
Sometimes though, to get the most out of your baking adventures, you want to use some baking tips and tricks to help you make the best cake possible.
I’ve listed a few below.
Cake Baking Tips
When it comes to homemade birthday cake ideas, there are a ton out there you can draw inspiration from. The best homemade birthday cake recipes are the ones that aren’t too sugary and that leaves you with a moist cake without the need to use a box cake recipe (those always tend to have a weird after taste in the end, eek!)
Though you might be tempted. Don’t open your oven door while the cake is cooking. This leads to less thorough cooking since it lets cold air in. It can dry your cake and nobody wants that.
Using parchment paper to line your cooking pans can be a much less messy way to make sure your cake comes out a lot better. It reduces the risk of cracking the cake, especially the bigger it gets.
Remember to not over cook! Even overcooking something for 3 extra minutes can mark the difference between a drier cake and a more moist one.
Don’t over mix! Over mixing can cause to a stiffer cake outcome than what you expected. Mix ingredients until they’re well mixed but not beyond that. It’s easy to get carried away on this one.
Make sure you use a spouted measuring cup to measure your liquid ingredients. Though it can be tempting to measure liquid ingredients with the same cups you use to measure your dry ones, this can make a difference in the outcome of your recipe and you won’t get exact measurements.
How to bake a flat cake
This is a question I always had whenever I baked the cake. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Was it too much baking powder? it wasn’t until I started searching for the answer that I found what I was looking for. It’ll make for an even better homemade birthday cake recipe.
If you’re making a layered cake and need the tops to be flat here’s the secret: You need to make sure the moisture in the cake is distributed more evenly.
You can do this by using cake baking strips like this one. You simply but it around your cake pan, bake it, and voila! You’ve got yourself a cake with a flat top that you can ice beautifully.
Or you can DIY your own.
All Images by Karly Gomez.
Classic Birthday Cake Recipe (Easy and Quick!)
Easy Birthday Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 sticks Salt free butter at room temperature
- 3 Cups All Purpose Flour OR Cake Flour
- 1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
- 1 Tbsp. Your favorite vanilla extract
- 4 Eggs
- 1 Cup Unrefined Sugar
- 1/2 Tsp. Salt
- 11/4 Cup Whole milk
- 1 Bottle Your preferred sprinkles
Meringue Ingredients
- 5-6 Egg whites
- 1 1/4 Cup Sugar
- 21/2 Cups Water
- 1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
- 1 Pinch Of Salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° degrees and butter a 9 x 9 cake pan and dust with flour. You can also line the bottom of the cake pan with parchment paper for easier detachment from the pan once cooked.
- Combine all the dry ingredients except the sugar in a bowl and mix well.
- Beat the butter and sugar together in a separate bowl with an electric mixer. If you don't have a mixer you can mix with a whisk, though make sure to mix well for about 2-3 minutes.
- Once butter and sugar are well mixed, add in one egg at a time and mix well.
- Add the vanilla extract.
- Carefully mix in your flour mixture in about three sections. Also mix in the milk a bit at a time.
- Once your batter is nice and mixed (be sure not to over mix) pour it in the cake pan and pat the pan onto the counter a few times to make sure your batter is evenly distributed.
- Bake for about 30-33 minutes until cake is golden and knife tip inserted into the middle comes out clean (without crumbs).
- Once done, let cake cool and transfer onto your preferred rack or cake pan.
Meringue Frosting Directions (makes about 6 cups of meringue)
- Combine sugar and water in a pan and bring to a slow boil stirring often.
- Add the pinch of salt and lemon juice.
- Beat the egg whites with a mixer until they form stiff peaks.
- Once done add in the sugar mixture in a little stream off the side of the bowl as you keep mixing the egg whites. Mix well.
- Once done, frost your cake to your liking and add sprinkles!
Notes
Best homemade birthday cake recipes
Now, this homemade birthday cake recipe isn’t the only one out there. There are lots more and each of them with their own twist, like vanilla birthday cake, or chocolate birthday cake.
Some of these might be a little more involved in the kitchen and might take a bit more to make. It all really comes down to what you’re looking for, and how much time you have to make them.