If this funfetti cake looks familiar, you caught me, I shared it exactly one year ago in celebration of the first unofficial birthday of Sugar Spun Run. Well, it’s been two years now since I almost completely deleted this whole website. Instead, I dug in full-force and have spent almost every spare second of my time developing and photographing (and now videoing) recipes to share with you. As a brief review before we get to this favorite layered funfetti cake of mine, I originally bought the name, Sugar Spun Run, in 2012 and published a few posts super casually, photographed via iPhone-only, and focused on… whatever caught my attention that particular day. It was maintained sporadically, sloppily, and definitely without intention. So in April of 2015 when I got the bill to renew my website, I almost canceled everything. I was literally one button-click away from doing so… and then decided maybe I’d give it one more shot.
Well, here we are, nearly 250 recipes later with a bright cheerful funfetti cake to show for it. It’s now been two years of late, powdered-sugar filled nights, of re-making recipes over and over again (often only to decide that they really were just right the first time), of website code-induced headaches, and of desperately attempting to solve the Rubik’s cube that is my camera. Well over 200 lbs of butter have made their way through my kitchen, and my KitchenAid has become my near-constant companion. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. So, while today can’t rightly be called my blog’s “birthday”, I wanted to commemorate this two year anniversary anyway. Today I’m celebrating Sugar Spun Run’s Unbirthday, and slicing up this confetti-colored, sprinkle stuffed, 3-layer, from-scratch Funfetti cake just for the occasion. So let’s get down to it.
How do you make Funfetti cake?
Funfetti cake is typically a fluffy white cake with sprinkles mixed into the batter. Light and fluffy, this cake is made with a combination of butter (for flavor) and oil (for texture and moisture). Developing this recipe took weeks, and the ingredients and their ratios were calculated very precisely and carefully. For maximum fluffy softness, this recipe calls for plenty of egg whites (no egg yolks). You’ll whip these separately with an electric hand mixer until they reach stiff peaks (that just means that when you lift a whisk straight out of the whites, the peaks stay and don’t recede back into themselves) and then fold them with a spatula into the cake batter. This is easy to do– it takes only about 5 minutes– and is critical for a light and fluffy white cake (don’t get me started on yellow funfetti cakes — there should be no such thing).
I used a buttercream that I flavored with a new emulsion that I found at my local cake shop (see notes in recipe), which accented the frosting with notes of citrus and almond. This kept the buttercream from being overbearingly sweet, but didn’t go over as well with Zach, who loathes lemon. Vanilla extract (or any other that you prefer) can also be used, of course, and I included notes in the recipe.
Today, I’m cutting up this carefully-crafted funfetti cake into thick slices in an Unbirthday celebration, and I’m so glad that you are here to join me. Thank you so much for following along, for taking the time to read my posts (or just look at the pictures, that’s OK too), comment, e-mail, and follow me on social media (your support as I tackle video on Facebook has been so helpful). This space would be nothing without you coming back day after day, and I know I wouldn’t have made it this far without so many kind, encouraging comments (when I get a comment telling me that you tried a recipe and loved it, it makes my whole day). Sugar Spun Run is here to stay. Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. –Earl Nightingale This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you purchase anything through these links I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please view the disclosure policy for more information. Recommended Kitchen Tools
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Recipe originally published 4/13/16 — text updated 4/13/17
