Simple Cake Recipe (Easy & Delicious Vanilla Cake)
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When searching for a simple cake recipe, it doesn’t get easier than this deliciously moist vanilla cake recipe. All it needs is a few simple ingredients like cooking oil, instant pudding mix, egg, water and vanilla cake mix and you are on your way to the best simple cake recipe around.
When I think of simple things in life, I think of moments that may not amount to much from a monetary standpoint but are worth more than anything else you could own. That’s the way I feel about this simple cake recipe. It brings back memories of a time gone by. Sunday mornings sitting with my Granddaddy and watching him as he tried to teach me how to wiggle my ears! We would be laughing and eating this simple sponge cake Mama made. Life truly did seem much simpler then.
Speaking of simple things, let’s jump into making this simple cake. This easy cake recipe uses a cake mix to keep things simple. Then we add eggs, water, oil, and vanilla pudding mix to ensure it’s perfectly soft and moist, and bursting with vanilla flavor. Once you mix the ingredients together, pop the cake batter into a bundt cake pan and patiently wait for it to bake.
Then you can serve it however you like. You might want to keep things plain, whip up a simple glaze to go with the simple sponge cake, or add fresh strawberries and vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. I’ll leave that choice up to you!
Recipe Ingredients
- Cooking oil
- Egg
- Vanilla instant pudding
- Water
- Yellow cake mix
How to Make a Simple Vanilla Cake
Toss all dry and wet ingredients in a bowl.
Whistle or dance a bit because this recipe isn’t complicated so you can occupy your mind with more lighthearted pursuits.
Mix it all up for about two or three minutes, until well blended.
Now you can grease and flour your cake tin but I prefer to just spray the living mess out of it with cooking spray.
I’m a role model for laziness, I know, but doing it my way gives you at least another 45 seconds with your family :). See? I’m actually just promoting family togetherness!
Pour the cake batter into your bundt cake tin and bake it at 350 for about an hour. Check it at about the 45-minute mark.
Fortunately for me, I have little oven guards.
Let it sit in your pan for 10 minutes before turning it out.
How long should I let the cake cool?
10 minutes is the magic number in cakes.
You should always let cakes cool for that amount of time and they turn out so much nicer!
At this point, you can eat the cake plain, apply a glaze, or serve it this way, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries.
I love strawberry shortcake and a slice of this is the perfect foundation!
To learn how to make homemade whipped cream, see this post.
Storage
- Store the cake, covered, at room temperature for up to 2 days. It will also last in the fridge for up to 5 days.
- Alternatively, freeze the cake for up to 3 months.
Recipe Notes
- As mentioned, use this vanilla cake recipe as a base and you can top it or serve it however you like. Here are some serving suggestions:
- Ice the cooled cake with my 7-minute frosting or creamy chocolate frosting.
- Apply a vanilla glaze (find a simple recipe on my orange cake recipe post).
- Serve with whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream and fresh berries, chocolate sauce, or caramel sauce.
- Simply dust the cake with powdered sugar.
- For a , add some frosting and pop some sprinkles on top.
- To make a , split the between two pans.
- You can totally use this to make a batch too. You’ll want to reduce the time to about 20 minutes though.
Recipe FAQs
Can I make this cake in a 9×13 pan?
Yes, you can make this homemade cake in any size pan you like. I just chose a bundt cake pan because I hadn’t made one in a while. But do whatever cranks your tractor. I am partial to a Texas sheet cake, as is evident here and here.
You may also like these other easy cake recipes:
Chocolate Pound Cake with Fudge Glaze
Chocolate Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting
Pineapple Upside Down Cake (Super Moist)
Ingredients
- 1 box yellow cake mix
- 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix 3.4 oz
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup oil
Instructions
- Mix all of the ingredients together with an electric mixer until well blended.1 box yellow cake mix, 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix, 4 eggs, 1 cup water, 1/3 cup oil
- Pour the cake batter into the greased bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes to an hour.
- Let the bundt cake sit in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
— Charles Mingus
Submitted by Emily. To submit your quote, please click here! Thank you!
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When my husband was little, he used to go to his grandma’s house and look at the pretty picture on the wall with the dog and the little girl & boy. When he grew up, his grandma gave it to us. It hung in our home for years in New York. Since we have moved to Florida it has banged around a bit but we would never part with it. It is a print from the top of a calendar – framed in England over 100 years ago by his great-grandmother and brought to America.
It is a snowy picture with a collie dog, a little girl hiding behind the dog and the little boy has a snowball in his hand in the throwing position and the saying below is “YOU DURSN’T. We all love that picture – guess the first child who asks for it will “inherit” it.
Barbara P.
I love this topic! My MawMaw is my best friend in the world. I’m so lucky to still have her, and that my daughter gets to know her. She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and given 6 months to live… that was 12+ years ago!!! She is a rockstar and my hero.
But, there are three things from her that are some of my prized possessions. One is a beautiful picture of her when she was about 22… 1950 or so.
The second, an oil lamp with a lady in the middle, and when it’s on, it looks like it’s raining… hard to explain. It was my FAVORITE thing growing up. I used to sit and stare at it for hours. I call her my goddess, and she lives in the middle of my great room now. 🙂
The piece de resistance… my MawMaw saved all my dresses from when I was a little girl. She made them all into a beautiful star-patterned quilt and gave it to me for my 21st bday. I told her that I was going to treasure it forever, and keep in sealed up tight in the cedar chest she gave me from her wedding day. She said, “Ami Jane… you’d better not! Quilts are meant to be loved and slept with!” So, I have, in fact, slept with it everyday. I just got it back from her, actually, because it was in for “repairs”.
Memories are amazing. MawMaws are priceless.
Thanks for bringing this up!
Amelia
Hi Christy,
I’ve been thinking about what reminds me of my mom and home, and this is going to sound nuts, but it is an ironing board. My mom always had an ironing board up in the kitchen as she always used it. I remember her singing while ironing and also complaining about ironing. I also remember using the ironing board to stash my books when I came home from high school. While I never iron, well almost never, I do have an ironing board. LOL Since I am or is it was an only child, I do have several things that are important to me but my mother wasn’t sentimental; she was a thrower outer, LOL, but I managed to salvage the wicker picnic basket my parents used when we went on family picnics (aunts, uncles, cousins) when I was a baby and as I was growing up.
Karen S.
A picture of Jesus knocking on a door that hung in my Granny’s house. My aunt has it now. My daughter got me a print of the same picture, but somehow it isn’t the same. I sure do miss my Granny! I love your site!
Hi Christy!
Mama passed away a little over 7 years ago (COPD) but I have many things of her’s we both treasured. I have the crystal bells we both collected for many years, the milk glass stuff (which was her mother’s first), my Mama’s portrait (taken when she was a WAC, back in the 1940’s), the dress she wore to my wedding 14 years ago, and even the old knit headbands she wore when I was very young (I wear them now).
But the main thing I cherish are the Sandwich glass dessert plates she gave me when I was a teenager. They, too, had belonged to her mother first (Granny Winey passed away the year before I was born) and Mama decided they had collected enough dust in her dining room & had to go. She was actually considering throwing them out (all 12) — I told her if she didn’t want them, I’d take them and she said I could have them as long as I moved them out of the dining room. Well, that started something; I now have a collection of about 50 pieces of Sandwich glass, including dinner plates, a cookie jar, serving bowls, and even a punch bowl & glasses. One of the days, after my little boys grow up, I hope to have a granddaughter to pass the collection on to!
I use my two grandmothers’ and my Mama’s old aluminum cookware from the 40’s. My kids all say that everything tastes better cooked in them. I also try to have homemade bread of some kind every day like one of my grandmothers did. Her house always smelled so delicious and since my mother was still at work when I got home from school, our house didn’t smell like that when I came home, so I tried to have something cooking when our kids got home from school. They are all grown now, but look forward to coming home and seeing what is waiting for them.
I’m not overly sentimental about most “things”, but I do treasure the photos. I always want the photos. I do have an old secretary (desk with fold down part) that belonged to my grandfather and great grandfather before him, and both my grandmother’s wedding rings.
My dad is pretty sentimental about “stuff”. He has his grandmothers sewing machine, and he remembers sewing with her when he was a little boy. She was his favorite person in the whole world and you can still tell when he shares his memories even though she’s been gone over 40 years now. He also has her old cooking spoon and several other treasured keepsakes that belonged to family memebers. I think it’s really wonderful that he connects to all those memories, but I am going to feel terrible one day when he’s gone and some of this stuff passes on to me. I have nowhere to keep it and no desire to actually put it in my own home, but I’m going to feel guilty just the same if I get rid of any of it!
I collect old kitchen items because of all the great memories I haveof my g mothers. Nannie had an aluminum tumbler and pitcher set that we drank lemonade from. The tumblers and pitcher were all different colors. When the metal got cold you could see the glasses “sweat”. I later found a new set and ordered it. Nannie also had some plastic black memorabilia salt & pepper shakers & syrup pitcher. You pulled back the head of the “Aunt Jemima” to pour your syrup. I don’t know what happened to them but on ebay they are priceless. She also had a Felix the cat clock (the one whose eyes& tail go back & forth)and I always looked for the clock when I first arrived. I have bought several bowls from antique shops & ebay that I remember my g mothers using. Everytime I use them (and yes I use them) I think of them. Talked to my sister and she looked for and found a picture that she remembers Grannie had hanging on the wall-a dog in the snow. We all have things that do bring back memories and hopefully they are good ones.