I have been on the hunt for a perfect yellow, or white cake recipe. I love box cake. I love the lightness and the texture—it's my ideal cake. It's what I grew up eating. My biggest disappointment with cupcakes, the fancy kind from the fancy shops, is that the cake is too heavy. Too rich, too many eggs, too much butter, and too much frosting. Don't get me wrong, I love a good pound cake, but only under certain conditions.
I love making cakes from scratch, and until a few years ago had only found the perfect chocolate cake. I'm going to call this type of cake homemade box cake for clarity, henceforth. The recipe is here and it's on my cheat-sheet and I have been using it for years, with Ghirardelli baking chocolate. But I had not found the perfect white/yellow homemade box cake recipe yet. They all were too much like an angelfood cake, which is not what I wanted. I wanted it to be more like a chiffon cake, but with less work and more like, you know, making a box cake.
Then I found this recipe and made it. You can visit the cake over here*, and it turned out exactly like I wanted. It was the perfect texture and had just the right amount of fluff. I know the key here is to use oil instead of butter, which is what I did. I think next time I will double the vanilla.
The whole "what oil to use?" issue makes my head hurt. For awhile I was avoiding canola altogether and now I just find the whole oil issue very confusing. There is a camp that say stay away from that poison that is canola oil and use only butter or coconut oil and then there are people who say the opposite. I know many bakers love olive oil cakes but I haven't found one that tastes right to me. Maybe I need to find a super light tasting olive oil to bake with. I used an organic canola oil for this cake since using butter or anything semi-solid was exactly what I didn't want.
If you have a perfect homemade box cake recipe, please feel free to say so in the comments. I feel like a huge hole in my baking repertoire has been filled.
*The meyer lemon curd recipe I used for Emily's cake is here, but I used 3 eggs yolks instead of 2 whole eggs. I had just made meringues, so I had extra yolks. It was divine.
