Pink Velvet Cake Recipe

For the Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray two 8-inch round cake pans with nonstick spray and line the inside bottom of each pan with parchment paper. Set aside.

Stir

In a large bowl, stir the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Set aside.

Beat

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the buttermilk, eggs, vegetable oil, white vinegar, vanilla extract, and pink gel food coloring together on low speed just until mixed. Add more food coloring until the desired shade of pink is reached.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and beat on a low speed just until mixed. Use a spatula to scrape down sides of bowl. Do not overmix.

Divide the cake batter evenly between both prepared cake pans (about 687 grams per pan). The same amount of batter should go in each pan so that the layers bake up to the same size.

Bake for 33-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.

Cool

Remove cakes from oven and let cakes cool in pans for 15 minutes before removing cakes from pans. Once removed from pans, place the cakes on wire racks to cool completely.

Refrigerate

Once the cakes have cooled to room temperature, wrap the cakes (wrap each layer separately so they don’t stick together) completely in food-safe plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours. This is an important step so the cakes firm up a bit before adding frosting. Smoothing frosting onto a warm cake will result in a crumbled cake.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting

Make

While the cakes chill, make the frosting: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract on high speed until smooth, about 2 minutes.

Beat in the powdered sugar until smooth, an additional 2 minutes.

For Assembly

Cut

Once the cakes have chilled, use a large serrated knife to cut the dome tops off both cakes so they both have a flat top. You don’t need these dome tops so these can be used for snacking.

Place a thin layer of frosting (about 2 tablespoons) in the middle of a cake board or cake plate, then place one cake (cut side facing up) on top of that frosting. This small bit of frosting helps to secure the cake to the cake board so the cake doesn’t slide around during decorating.

Add a generous layer of frosting on top of that first layer of cake then place the second layer of cake(bottom facing up) on top of the first layer of cake.

Crumb Coat

Frost a thin layer of frosting around the top and sides of the cake. This thin layer (called a crumb coat) is meant to secure all the crumbs to the cake. This is just a thin layer of frosting so it doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth and it’s okay if you can still see the cake through this first layer of frosting. Use a tool like a cake scraper to smooth the frosting out.

Freeze

Place the lightly frosted cake in the freezer for 10 minutes so the first layer of frosting firms up a bit.

Color

Split the remaining frosting into 3 equal parts. Color one bowl light pink, color another bowl a darker pink, then leave one bowl as white frosting. Place these frosting into tipless icing bags (each color in its own bag).

Pipe

Remove the cake from the freezer and, starting at the bottom of the cake with the darker pink frosting, pipe frosting all around the bottom third of the cake. This doesn’t have to be a neat stripe – we’ll be smoothing this out later.

Pipe

Take the lighter pink frosting and pipe it around the middle section of the cake, then take the white frosting and pipe it around the top third of the cake as well as on the top of the cake.

Smooth

Use the cake scraper to smooth the frosting around the sides and top of the cake. Do this gently so you’re smoothing it out but not scraping it all off. Place the extra frosting you remove(while lightly scraping the cake) into a bowl.

Pipe

Take all of the remaining frosting and combine it into one bowl. Color this any shade of pink you’d like, then pipe circles around the top of the cake using a large round icing tip (like a Wilton 1A).

Freeze

Place the cake back into the freezer for about 10 minutes just to firm up those frosting details.