Vanilla

Vanilla Cupcakes II, originally uploaded by bakers-cakes.

One of my tasks this week was to create several vanilla cake samples for a customer to test. At first I thought that testing vanilla would be well... vanilla. But it turns out that I learned a lot from baking three different vanilla cakes and making three different vanilla frostings.

This is my go-to vanilla cake recipe, Buttermilk Vanilla. It is a butter cake that gets it's complex flavor from the buttermilk. In my opinion this cake is perfectly moist, not overly dense, and has wonderful texture and crumb for both layer cakes and cupcakes. This is also my favorite Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. My customer's love it. It is sweet and creamy and works well as a crumb coat and as my go-to frosting:

Next it was time to think a little outside the box. I made an interesting White Cake that gets it's light fluffy texture from whipped egg whites. This cake reminded me a little of a spongy angel cake. I paired this cake with a Fluffy White Frosting. This frosting is very marshmallowy and doesn't have any butter in it:

Last, I made a Yellow Cake that is slightly denser than the Buttermilk Cake. Interestingly, as the White Cake used whipped egg whites, the Yellow Cake used egg yolks. The cake itself is also nicely flavored and textured and just as moist as the other two cakes. I paired the Yellow Cake with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting. Traditionally this is a less sweet more buttery frosting. I took a small liberty and sweetened up the frosting so it would not be quite so overwhelmingly buttery:

All vanilla. All different. And as it turns out, not as... vanilla as I thought they were going to be.