Easy Dairy-Free Funfetti Cake is a simple vanilla confetti cake recipe for a delicious, moist, beautiful birthday cake with sprinkles, made without milk or butter.
Easy Dairy-Free Funfetti Cake is a beautiful and colorful vanilla birthday cake. Perfect for anyone who doesn't like chocolate or is avoiding it. Or anyone who just loves vanilla.
It's not only for birthdays, though. It's perfect for any party or celebration.
Otherwise known as confetti cake, it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser for kids and adults alike.
And it's versatile-you can easily turn it into a layered celebration cake or a simple single-layer sheet cake by pouring the batter into an 8"x12" baking pan instead of two round 8" pans.
Love sprinkles? Try these!
Easy Dairy-Free Funfetti Cookies Recipe
Easy Dairy-Free Funfetti Cookie Bars Recipe
Easy Funfetti Cupcakes
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Can I freeze this dairy-free funfetti cake?
Yes, you can freeze the baked, unfrosted cake layers for up to 2 months. Wrap each layer tightly in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil before freezing. Thaw completely at room temperature before frosting.
Can I freeze a frosted dairy-free funfetti cake?
Yes, you can freeze a frosted cake. Place the cake uncovered in the freezer for about 1 to 2 hours until the frosting is firm, then wrap it loosely in plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil to protect it. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator, then unwrap it before bringing it to room temperature to keep the frosting intact.
Why is oil used instead of butter in this dairy-free cake?
Oil keeps this cake exceptionally moist because it stays liquid at room temperature, unlike butter, which solidifies as it cools. It also provides a light, tender crumb while keeping the recipe dairy-free.
What kind of sprinkles should I use?
It's best to use sprinkles that hold their color in batter. Otherwise, you may end up with streaks.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for baking:
Why do recipes have salt in the ingredients of baked goods?
Even though salt tends to make foods, well, salty, it actually plays other roles in baking as well.
For example, the right amount of salt balances flavors in baked goods; it can bring out the sweetness of sugar and, at the same time, prevent them from tasting overly sweet. It also can help dull the bitterness of cocoa.
Salt prevents baked goods from tasting bland, while it balances the richness of the fats. It also helps develop flavor in yeast breads and works with proteins to strengthen gluten and make it more elastic.
Salt also slows down yeast fermentation because it prevents the yeast from eating up the sugars too quickly, which otherwise would cause the dough to rise too fast and then ultimately collapse, causing bread to come out flat instead of fluffy.
Salt helps baked goods stay a little fresher for a little longer and helps delay mold from growing on them.
What is the difference between baking soda and baking powder?
Baking soda and baking powder are both synthetic leavens that help baked goods rise, but there is a difference between them.
Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate, which needs another ingredient that is acidic in order to be activated. When the baking soda touches the acid, it creates a carbon dioxide gas, which helps the baked good rise. Baking soda is between 3 and 4 times stronger than baking powder, and if too much baking soda is used, your baked good will end up with a metallic flavor.
Baking powder is baking soda that is already mixed with an acid and a stabilizer and will be activated by moisture and heat. Nowadays, baking powder is called double-acting because it activates twice-once when it gets wet (when you mix the ingredients together) and again when it heats in the oven.
Replacing one with the other can be tricky, and it's not recommended. However, if you have no choice, then do solid research for substituting one for the other for the baked good you are preparing so you don't ruin it.
What do eggs do in baking?
Eggs are made up of two parts: the whites and the yolks (the yellow).
Egg whites are made up of protein that sets when heated and helps baked goods hold their structure. The yolks are made up of fats and vitamins and help ingredients bond.
Eggs also help baked goods rise as well as keep them moist.
It is important to have the right amount of eggs when baking, because if there are too many eggs in a recipe, this can cause a rubbery, dense texture, and if there are too few eggs, this can cause a crumbly, dry texture.
The different parts of the egg will provide different textures to baked goods; using the entire egg in baking will provide moisture and help the baked good rise evenly, using extra yolks will create richer, denser textures, and extra whites will add fluffiness but may create a drier texture.
Should I sift flour before I use it?
Unless you are concerned about bugs or clumps from moisture, the need to sift depends on your recipe.
For example, you don't need to sift for dense baking like muffins or quick breads, where lumps won't ruin the texture. But you should sift for recipes that rely on air bubbles, such as sponge or angel cakes or soufflés.
You also should sift your flour if you are making baked goods with a high fat content, such as brownies, because it is important that the fat be absorbed throughout all of the flour, and having flour clumps could prevent this.
Sifting the baking powder and/or baking soda together with the flour and salt before mixing in the other ingredients may be able to help prevent cakes from coming out lopsided, where one side may be somewhat higher than the other.
What is the difference between butter and margarine?
Butter is a dairy product that is made by churning heavy cream until the fats separate from the milk (i.e., buttermilk). Margarine, however, is made from vegetable oil. Butter generally has a lower melting point than margarine as well as a lower water content (and the soft tub margarines have a higher water content than bar margarines).
Using butter in baking cookies can create a crisper, more flaky cookie, while cookies will come out softer and more cakey when made with margarine. It is also generally believed to be better to "cream" using butter rather than margarine.
Using butter adds a kind of toasted nut flavor to baked goods, while margarine doesn't add flavor (however, sometimes with margarine, one might have a waxy feel on the roof of one's mouth after eating something with a high margarine content).
If one wants to make a dairy-free baked good that calls for butter, a dairy-free margarine is a good substitute.
What is the difference between dairy-free margarine and vegan butter?
Vegan butter and margarine have similarities. In fact, all vegan butter is a type of dairy-free margarine. The difference between them is in the content and the baking performance.
Vegan butter is made from fats such as coconut oil, shea butter, or cocoa butter and behaves like butter in that it creates more flaky and crisp textures and has a toasted nutty flavor, while margarine is typically made with the less expensive vegetable oils.
What is the difference in using oil vs. butter or margarine?
Both margarine and butter are solid fats at room temperature, and both contain more saturated fats than oil.
While margarine and butter will change from a solid to a liquid when heated, they will change back to solids when cooled again. Oil stays liquid at all temperatures. Oil also coats flour better in the preparation process before baking.
Butter "creams" better than margarine, but one cannot cream oil at all.
When converting a recipe from butter or margarine to oil, the general conversion rate is 1 to ¾ (although if you are doing more than one batch, you might need to reduce the oil because I have found that baked goods come out oily in this case).
And when converting from oil to margarine or butter, typically the ratio is 1 to 1¼.
What is the difference between real vanilla extract and imitation vanilla?
Real vanilla is made from soaking vanilla beans in alcohol, imitation vanilla is synthetic, and real vanilla costs quite a bit more than imitation. Whether or not there will be a taste difference in your baking depends on the baked good, so do some research before you decide.
I personally always use the imitation as long as I have a really good brand because it's not worth it to me to spend the extra money.
Tips for baking
Preparing the batter
As obvious as that may sound (except to people like me), following instructions when baking is important.
It seems that all too often, bloggers will add extra steps or add extra ingredients, unnecessarily complicating the recipes.
Nonetheless, sometimes what seems unnecessary can be helpful.
That noted, the best way to start, unless directed otherwise, is by putting the dry ingredients in the bowl first and combining them together, and then adding the wet ingredients.
I haven't found that it matters much what order ingredients are put in the bowl when it comes to dough, however, with batter, it can make a difference, and it is a good practice to add the wet ingredients, one at a time, blending lightly in between, mixing slowly and thoroughly.
Dumping all of the ingredients in before mixing can leave flour clumps, which may not dissolve while baking and mixing too quickly will add air bubbles, which can create air gaps in the cake
Flour clumps, especially the larger ones, may not bake into your cake, and you may find them in your slices. If you have them, remove as many as you can before baking. Using a strainer helps. (Yes, this has happened to me.)
If you find you do have a lot of little air bubbles, gently tap the side of the bowl with your fingers before you pour into the pan (you can do this with the pan if you didn't notice the bubbles until you already poured the batter).
The tapping will pop them (you can actually see this). You may not get rid of them all, but the bigger ones are more important to pop. The bubbles seem to be more of a problem with thinner batter and with thicker batter.
The batter
Before you pour the batter into the pan(s), make sure to coat well with something to help prevent your final products from sticking.
There are various ways to do this, depending on your preference. You can use some type of fat, such as oil or cooking spray, margarine, or butter, with or without sprinkling flour as well. Or you can use baking paper.
My personal preference is to place baking paper on the bottom of the pan(s) and then coat with cooking spray, or vice versa. Baking paper can come in individual sheets or in rolls. For round pans, you can buy a suitable size that will fit right on the bottom of the pan. OR you can place the pan on top of the baking paper, trace around the bottom of the pan, and cut to size.
If you use baking paper, you might find that it won't stay at the bottom of the pan properly while you are trying to pour the batter in, and there are a couple of tricks I use to help. One is to cut the paper so it fits in the pan like a lining, and the other is to wet it so it sticks (the latter is quicker, so I normally use that one).
When making cupcakes or muffins, you can coat or you can use cupcake paper. I have found that with some brands, however, while the paper won't stick to the pan, it will stick to the cupcake, so you might want to lightly spray the paper before you pour in the batter.
If you are making a layer cake, separate the batter equally into both pans. The best way to do this is to weigh the pans with batter to make sure they are even. Personally, I just eyeball it (which is probably not the best idea unless you have a good eye).
Baking
Ovens often vary in how they spread heat, something that can cause uneven baking. This can cause a variety of problems in baking, such as lopsided cakes, raw middles, over-baked sides, etc.
One way to help prevent this is to turn your pan around on the shelf in the middle of baking to help ensure it will bake more evenly.
Another reason for uneven baking, where the item comes out fine on the top and burnt on the bottom, is if a crumb or a piece of something is at the bottom and will burn as you bake.
If your cake comes out lopsided, one way to fix that is to slice off the uneven part before putting on the frosting. I hate losing cake, so when it does this, I will slice approximately halfway through the higher part and flip it over onto the lower part before adding the frosting.
To help prevent lopsidedness in the first place, this method is often used: take a strip of aluminum foil that is around 4-6 inches longer than the circumference or perimeter of your pan and lay the wet paper towel on it, then fold the foil over the paper towel lengthwise so it is just a bit less wide than the height of the pan.
Wrap the foil around the pan and slide one end in the other (crimp it a bit if you need to so it will hold). This will create a moisture barrier for baking (I have read that some people put a pan of water in the oven when baking - I haven't tried that yet).
I found all of that a little tedious, so I bought cake strips. These are absorbable cotton belts, around 2" wide, and come in a few different lengths to be wrapped around and secured on round cake tins. These are soaked (but not dripping) when you wrap them around the pan.
If you need to use them for a larger rectangular pan, you can just attach a number of them together.
Cooling
You know your baked good is ready when a toothpick can slide cleanly and easily in and out of the baked item (or when the top is a little firm and springy), it can be removed from the oven.
Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.
If you are going to remove the item from the pan, run a knife around the sides between the cake and the pan. Place a plate or cooling rack over the top and flip.
If you want the top side to remain on the top, you will flip the item over twice (once to remove it from the pan and once to get it back).
For cupcakes and muffins, I recommend using cupcake paper, and after you have used the knife to loosen them from the cup, you should be able to just pop them out carefully using the same knife.
Frosting and filling
Once the cakes or cupcakes have completely cooled, you can apply the frosting, ganache, or whip cream.
If you baked the cake correctly, it should be nice and flat. If you do have some unevenness, you can slice it off (it shouldn't be much) with a serrated bread knife.
I hate losing cake, so what I do is slice off about half of it lengthwise, and then flip the slice over to fill in the lower section. Once the frosting is on, you can't even tell.
When I use a 9"x13" pan, I just use frosting or ganache on the cake and maybe top with sprinkles for color. However, if I am making a layer cake, I will put whip cream in the middle and then cover with frosting or ganache.
To make the whipped cream, just whip 1 cup of sweet whipping cream until you can form peaks. Be careful not to over-whip, as it will eventually turn liquid.
If you are making a layer cake, spread on the lower layer of the cake, then place the second layer on top for a two-layer cake.
Whipped cream is soft and, in itself, cannot hold up the top layer of cake. To fix this, a stabilizer is added to the whipped cream to make it stiffer.
There are many stabilizers on the market, but some simple ones are cornflour, gelatin, powdered pudding mix, confectioner's sugar, or - if you don't mind dairy - powdered milk. Note that powdered pudding mix and confectioner's sugar both contain cornflour.
Generally, you just have to add 1 teaspoon for a cup of liquid whipping cream (add it after the cream has been whipped) or a little more if you want it more firm. You need to be careful, however, not to put in too much, as it will change the taste of the cream.
For chocolate cream, add 2-3 teaspoons of cocoa to the whipped cream. If you feel that the now-chocolate cream has lost sweetness, add a little white sugar (to taste) and whip. If the cream now tastes a bit grainy, not to worry-it will melt.
Baking and Dessert Pantry Essentials
Besides the usual baking equipment in my kitchen, I always make sure to have a variety of ingredients at all times:
- flour
- white granulated sugar
- brown sugar (light/dark-I usually keep dark)
- confectioners' sugar (powdered sugar)
- salt
- baking powder
- baking soda
- cocoa powder
- ground cinnamon
- ground nutmeg
- ground ginger
- ground cloves
- baking chocolate
- chocolate chips
- instant dry yeast
- vanilla and/or vanilla sugar
- cooking oil/cooking spray
- margarine or butter
- eggs
- honey
- instant coffee
- various extracts (real or imitation)
I also make sure that I have the following on hand to be able to make a variety of fillings, frostings, and toppings:
- whipping cream
- powdered pudding mix
- powdered sugar
- a good chocolate spread
Then, there is the following to make last-minute quick desserts:
- packaged pie dough or ready-made pie crusts
- puff pastry dough
Lastly, it's not a bad idea to keep fun toppings, such as chopped walnuts, raisins, and the oh-so-important container of sprinkles.
Easy Dairy-Free Funfetti Cake Recipe
Dairy-free vanilla birthday cake with sprinkles.
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cups of flour
- 1 ½ cups white granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ½ cups water
- ½ cup oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla flavoring
- ½ cup colorful sprinkles (plus more for the top, if desired) *
Instructions
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in a large bowl.
- Add in the eggs, water, oil, and vanilla and mix until completely combined and smooth.
- Pour the batter equally into 2 round 8" pans that have been greased (it is best to place round baking paper on the bottom of the pans as well).**
- Pour half of the sprinkles into each of the pans and gently fold or mix them in.**
- Place into an oven that has been preheated to 350°.
- Bake for 30-40 minutes or until you can stick a toothpick in the middle and it comes out clean (personally, I just gently touch the tops of the layers and remove as soon as they become firm)
- Let cool and remove from pan by takin a butter knife and work it around the edge of the cake between the cake and the pan, turn over the pan on to a drying rack, turn table, or a plate (if you see that you need to fix lopsidedness, flip again).
- Cover the bottom layer with whatever you have chosen for flling (I just use frosting) and then cover the outside with frosting of choice. Decorate as desired.
Notes
* Make sure to get sprinkles that won't quickly melt. Otherwise, you will get swirls of color instead of dots.
** Or you can pour all of the batter into a greased 8"x12" rectangular baking pan and gently fold in the sprinkles to make a delicious layer cake.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
12Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 287Total Fat: 11gSaturated Fat: 1gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 9gCholesterol: 47mgSodium: 258mgCarbohydrates: 43gFiber: 1gSugar: 25gProtein: 4g
