What's for Dinner: Homemade [Vanilla] Cake with [Oreo] Buttercream Frosting

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Happy Birthday Faraz! We sure are getting to the age where I don't even want to say the age anymore!

For Faraz's [my brother] birthday today, I narrowed down the dessert to something either to do with chocolate chip cookies or Oreos relatively quickly because those are his favorite [cookies]. Ultimately, Oreos won over simply because I came up with more ideas for it.

I made the following cake: Homemade Vanilla Cake with Oreo Buttercream frosting.

I starting off by baking a white [yellow?] cake and butter-cream frosting. I changed up the frosting, however, by mixing in Oreo cookie crumbs [the white cream center portion and all].

For my cake, you need:

• 10 tablespoons of butter, at room temperature
• 1 and 3/4 cups of sugar
• 2 [large] eggs
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 2 and 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 2 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 and 1/4 cups of milk, room temperature

To make the cake:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray your [non-stick] pans with non-stick cooking spray to be on the extra cautious side.
2. Cream together your butter and sugar in a [large] mixing bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy [I'd say it takes about 3-4 minutes]. 
3. Next, add in your eggs and the vanilla extract. Beat your mixture until everything is combined.
4. In a separate bowl: combine your flour, baking powder, and salt.
5. Alternate adding in the milk and your dry ingredient combination to your wet mixture. So add in some of the flour mixture, and then some of the milk. Keep repeating until everything is incorporated in. Mix just until combined.
6. Pour the batter evenly into (two) cake pan(s). Bake for about 30 minutes (for 2 nine-inch round cakes) [or until a toothpick, fork, etc. inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean].
7. Let the cake(s) cool for around 10 minutes before removing them from the pan to a wire rack [and letting them cool completely].

Cupcakes would probably bake for around 18-20 minutes [only fill 2/3 of the way up as they will rise!].

For the frosting you need:

• 1 cup of unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups of powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

To make [just] the buttercream frosting without the Oreos incorporated:

1. Put the softened butter in a bowl, and cream it on medium to high speed for several minutes. 
2. Reduce the speed of your mixer to low, and gradually add in the powdered sugar. Two cups of powdered sugar was plenty for me, but you may want to taste it and add some more if you want it sweeter.
3. When all of your powdered sugar has been incorporated, increase the speed to medium before adding in the vanilla extract. Mix well until everything is incorporated.

I needed 2 and a half times the amount listed above to frost in between and around a two layered cake, but it was much easier to do it in batches as I don't have a stand-mixer... and was using my hand-mixer!.

For frosting the cake for my brother, I wanted to incorporate in Oreos, so what I did was: I took a little frosting [ about 1 cup or so?] and set it aside for later use. Next, for each batch of frosting, I crumbled about half a cup of [normal sized] Oreo cookies, and folded it into the majority of the frosting [not the one I set aside for later use]. The frosting was absolutely delicious as is without the Oreos, but incorporating the Oreos into the frosting itself took the cake over the top.  I wanted to incorporate the Oreos into the cake batter itself as well, but out of a abundance of caution I decided not to experiment with that. I did need a cake for the night, after all.

Tip: You can store any unused frosting in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Just let it come to room temperature before using it again.

To assemble everything:

1. Tip: Line the bottom of the platter [or whatever you plan to serve the cake in] with parchment paper along just the corners. This will help keep the platter edges neat and clean while you frost. The mess will remain on the parchment paper, which you can easily remove when you are done.
2. Place one of your cake rounds on the platter and frost the top of the cake with your frosting. Do this liberally, as it will also serve as the binding layer between your two layers of cake!
3. Put your second layer of cake on top of the first one. Frost the rest of the cake [the sides and the top]. You could choose to just stop here, but what I did next was:
4. That frosting I set aside earlier? I used that to decorate on top of my Oreo-frosted cake along the top of my cake, leaving some space in between each. Finally, I added a bite-size Oreo in between each of the decorated star on top.

When you are done decorating the cake, don't forget to pull out the parchment paper along the bottom of the platter! Like I mentioned in this post: it is much easier to have smaller pieces of parchment paper, instead of one large one, when you are ready to remove the parchment paper at the end.

P.S. This post is a part of my "What's for Dinner" series, where I share what I've been cooking and my recipes. Grab and share my button:

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