These cakes are absolutely scrumptious. We have served them to hundreds of people in our store and repeatedly we hear, “Best cake I’ve ever had.” The cakes are good but it’s the frostings that folks are finding heavenly.
All you have to do is make a regular vanilla cake in a 9×13 pan, mixing your preferred flavors into the batter, cut the cake half, stack the halves on top of each other with your preferred fillings or frosting in between, and topped with your favorite whipped cream frosting.
When to Make Whipped Cream Cakes
These are the most beautiful, best looking cakes in the world, but you should only make them when:
- You are going to eat the whole cake in the first day.
- When you have ultra-heavy whipping cream available.
- When you have meringue powder.
- When you have a cream cake mix or something equal. Many scratch recipes are as dense as a cream cake (but not as dense as a pound cake). Those light, fluffy cakes that you make from store mixes don’t have enough substance.
The Whipped Cream Frosting is to Die For
The frostings are made with whipped cream. But not ordinary whipped cream. They are loaded with fillings and flavors, often cream cheese, and sometimes nuts or fruits. In the cake above, there is a little caramel poking out between the swirls.
Say Goodbye to Boring Whipped Cream
The frosting is lighter and not as sweet as buttercream. It melts in your mouth. It’s like ice cream that’s not frozen. Once you’re hooked on whipped cream frosting, you’ll never go back to buttercream.
The Secret Ingredient
The frosting is stabilized with meringue powder. The main ingredient in meringue powder is egg whites. It’s the inclusion that goes into royal icing, the icing used to make floral decorations on wedding cakes. You can make icing as hard as you want with meringue powder.
We’re adding two tablespoons of meringue powder for each cup of frosting. For whipped cream, use half that. Without the meringue powder, the frosting would not hold up.
A Quick Disclaimer About the Whipped Cream Frosting
As explained, the whipped cream frosting tastes much better than buttercream frosting, and the meringue powder is essential for stabilizing the frosting. As that is, you should only expect your whipped cream cakes to hold up for about a day. The whipped cream frosting will still look okay the second day, but it will start to deflate and soak through the cake.
Using a heavier whipping cream, about 40% heavy whipping cream to make the frosting is also necessary to keep the whipped cream frosting from deflating early.
If you need the cake to last longer than a day or two, you might consider using buttercream frosting instead. All of the flavors in any of the recipes below will still work just as well.
About the Filling Between the Layers
Our whipped cream cakes are layered cakes. While you could simply use frosting between the layers to hold them together, we also use a pastry filling, with a thin spread of frosting to keep the cake from getting soggy, to give the cake extra flavor. However, you can also use a jam or jelly in between the layers instead.
How to Form the Layered Whipped Cream Cake
- Start with a cream cake mix baked in a 9×13 inch cake pan lined with parchment paper.
- Using the edges of the parchment paper, lift the cake out of the pan and invert it onto a cutting board. Cut the cake in half.
- Put a thin layer of frosting on both halves. If you want a layer of pastry filling between the layers, you can then use a piping bag to form a dam of frosting and spread the pastry filling in the middle.
- Carefully invert one cake layer on top of the other, the layer of frosting facing inwards.
- Use whipped cream frosting to top the layered cake as desired.
The Whipped Cream Cakes
We’ve made dozens of cakes and cupcakes with these frostings. We have included a few of the more popular recipes here:
- Pumpkin Walnut Whipped Cream Cake
- Lemon Cake with Lemon Filling
- Apricot Mango Cake
- Huckleberry Cream Cake
- Caramel Nut Cream Cake
- Chubby Cherry Whipped Cream Cake
- Orange Dream Whipped Cream Cake
(Updated from October 26, 2016)