Italian Cream Cake

One evening last week, the mothers and daughters from our small group got together to celebrate the upcoming arrival of the baby of our friend Rivers. This family has been such a blessing to our group so we ladies wanted to celebrate with Rivers and her two sweet girls. We planned a meal of salads, followed by a few desserts: Italian cream cake, raspberry white chocolate almond bars, brownies, and coffee.

This Italian cream cake is my most requested cake by my family or when I’m asked to bring a dessert to a special occasion. It suits any holiday or celebration any time of the year! It’s unique from most other Italian cream cakes in that it doesn’t call for pecans or coconut, so everyone can eat it. WIN!

I’ve been making this recipe for almost 17 years–how do I know? A friend made it for my own baby shower when I was expecting my second daughter 17 years ago! I fell in love with it’s buttermilk layers and creamy frosting at first bite, got the recipe, and have been making it ever since.

I’ve had several requests for the recipe, so today I’m going to walk us through it, step by step, with photos. At the end of this post I’ve attached a file with the recipe and all its ingredient amounts and directions so you can just print it.

Italian Cream Cake

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and prepare 3 cake pans with a rubbing of Crisco and a dusting of flour. Set aside.

Step 2: Beat the 5 egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the 1/2 cup of sugar until the mixture thickens to a meringue-like consistency. Set aside.

Step 3: In a separate mixing bowl, cream the butter with the Crisco, adding the remaining sugar and vanilla.

Step 4: Add the 5 egg yolks, one at a time, until the batter is thick and well blended. Set aside.

Step 5: Stir the baking soda into the buttermilk. Set aside.

Step 6: Sift the salt and cake flour together into another bowl. Set aside.

Step 7: Returning to your butter mixture, add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour.

Step 8: Fold the egg whites into the batter.

Step 9: Divide the batter among the prepared cake pans.

Step 10: Bake until until the cake is golden, pulling away from the sides, and a cake tester comes out clean. The original recipe says to bake for 55 minutes, but mine never takes this long, especially since it’s divided into 3 pans. I check it at about 20 or 25 minutes and then every 5 minutes after that just to make sure I don’t overbake it. Ovens vary! After cooling in the pan for about 10 minutes, invert onto cooling racks to finish cooling.

The photo above is from an occasion where I made 3 Italian cream cakes for an event, so these are all my layers, baked and ready to freeze. I usually bake my cake layers ahead of time, wrap each layer individually with plastic wrap, place the 3 wrapped layers on board, wrap the whole board of layers, and freeze them. Then I take them out and ice them the day I’m going to serve it. The frosting recipe is included in the attached file. It’s pretty basic so I’m not including pictures; the instructions on the file will be easy enough. I almost always double this recipe, especially if I’m going to pipe the cake (sometimes 2 1/2 recipes!)

I’ve made this cake for birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, office parties, bridal and baby showers, and the 50th anniversaries of Joel’s and my parents. It lends itself perfectly to a wide variety of occasions, piping styles, and cake toppers! Fresh flowers are always beautiful on this cake because of the neutral cream-colored icing.

The large star tip swirl is my favorite piping technique on this cake for two reasons: it’s attractive and it puts a LOT of icing on every serving! If I’m going to do this technique all over the cake, I will make 2 1/2 recipes of the icing. The Christmas version below is one of my favorites.
I wish I had a photo of a sliced piece so you could see the inside. It usually gets gobbled up before I can even think about taking a picture!

But some occasions call for a smooth application as I used for the recent baby shower. Rivers has a sense of style that is soft, simple, clean, and elegant. I wanted the cake and decorations to reflect that.

Note: With the frosting, it’s best to use Philadelphia brand cream cheese. I used an off brand last week because that was all I could find at the store I shopped at, but it was softer and so I had to add more powdered sugar to thicken it. It was fine because I was doing a smooth application, but if I’m going to pipe the cake, it definintely needs the Philadelphia brand.