I Tried 6 Famous Birthday Cakes (Including THE Funfetti Box) and the Flawless Winner Will Be the Recipe I Use Forever

Overall rating: 9/10
Get the recipe: Claire Saffitz’s Confetti Cake

This recipe uses the reverse creaming method, where you combine all the dry ingredients (featuring cake flour here) and then add softened butter, buttermilk, and oil — no separate step of creaming together butter and sugar first. Then you quickly whisk whole eggs, egg whites, vanilla extract, and almond extract (optional, but I used it), and this mixture then goes into the batter before folding in sprinkles. The batter was very thick, and it went into 3 (9-inch) cake pans to bake. 

Unlike all of the other recipes, this one used cream cheese frosting. You’re instructed to beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth, then add a full pound of powdered sugar at once and mix on low speed until incorporated. I didn’t read this closely enough, so I first made it by gradually adding the powdered sugar to the butter and cream cheese mixture; it was soupy. I then re-read the instructions (thankfully I had extra ingredients on hand) and remade the frosting the right way. It was creamy and swoopy the second time around.

The assembled cake was lovely. The layers had a dense, velvety crumb reminiscent of pound cake, and despite having 3 whole eggs in it, the color was very white. The frosting was an excellent choice, as the tang from the cream cheese complemented the sweet vanilla cake. I loved this cake and would be happy to make and eat it again. The two cakes that ranked higher just stood out a little more.