This vanilla Oreo cake is super easy to whip up using a simple vanilla cake batter with bits of crushed Oreo sprinkled throughout.
While I absolutely love to bake bread (see some of my favorite bread recipes like this sage and roasted garlic bread and or these homemade sandwich rolls), I don’t consider myself to be the best dessert baker. Baking cakes can be finnicky and sometimes you need to use very exact about measurements, so in all honestly, when I need to bake a cake I usually pick up a box of mix. But I have to say, this vanilla Oreo cake really may have changed my mind. It’s so easy to make, and you don’t have to be super exact in the measurements. Simply whip up an easy vanilla cake, fold in a bunch of crushed Oreos, and bake.
Obviously I baked this cake for Halloween (which I know is over, but I’m posting this recipe a week after I made it), but you can use this same batter for any shaped cake pan. But this cake is so easy and delicious, it might be my new go-to recipe for just about any occasion, and I can think of tons of different ways to decorate it that aren’t quite so spooky.
A HALLOWEEN CAKE
A few weeks ago when I was looking for something completely different in one of the “random items” cabinets in our kitchen, I came across this skeleton cake pan. As someone who loooooves Halloween, I purchased this cake pan a few years ago to bake a cake for our annual Halloween movie night. I think I really only used it once, and it sat in the cabinet until this past weekend. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to use it this year. My niece Scarlet is starting to love Halloween as well (thanks so me and her dad), and since she already loves to help in the kitchen, I knew she would be super excited to use this cake mold.
I wanted our cake to not only be in the shape of a skeleton, but to really look like a skeleton too. So I settled on this vanilla Oreo cake for the batter, so that the cake would be white-ish (like a skeleton), but also look old and dirty (thanks to the bits of Oreo inside). Then I whipped up a simple chocolate ganache (the recipe for that will be coming next week, but you can definitely use store-bought) and used some more crushed Oreos around the skeleton to look like dirt. Of course, you can use this exact recipe for a non-Halloween cake. Simply bake the batter in two nine-inch round cake pans, and once cooled layer them with the buttercream. Then you can decorate with more whole Oreos on top.
KIDS IN THE KITCHEN
I’ve realized that more and more of my recipes are starting to use the heading “kids in the kitchen” for some of my writing. And that’s because my niece Scarlet helps me with just about everything I make nowadays. Some of my favorite kid-friendly recipes include these painted sugar cookies, cheez-it crackers, herb and tomato focaccia and cherry lemonade popsicles. But I truly believe that any recipe can be adapted into a kid-friendly one as long as you give them appropriate tasks to do, and this vanilla Oreo cake was no exception.
For this cake, Scarlet helped me crack the eggs (one of her favorite things do do), pour all the ingredients into the bowls, and mix the batter. But I think her favorite thing to do was to crush the Oreos to mix into the batter. I threw all the Oreos into a large ziplock bag, and normally I would use a rolling pin to crush them. But this time, I got her started by crushing the large cookies into slightly smaller pieces, and then let her go to town crushing them all between her fingers. And while I know it’s past Halloween, and I said you could make this cake in any cake pan, if you do happen to be cooking with kiddos I think that a specifically-shaped cake pan makes this cake especially fun for them.
Vanilla Oreo Cake
Ingredients
- 2+1/4 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1+1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 3 eggs, room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup milk, room temperature
- 12 oreos, roughly chopped
- 2 cups frosting
- more oreos, whole or crushed, for decorating
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, vegetable oil, milk and vanilla.
- Mix half of the dry mixture into the wet and whisk well to combine. Then add the remaining dry mixture and whisk completely until no bits of dry mixture remain and the batter is smooth.
- Prep your cake pans; either one large pan (like my skeleton one), or two nine inch round cake pans. Grease the pans well and dust with flour.
- Bake your cake until a toothpick insterted in the center comes out clean. If using smaller pans, 30-40 minutes, if using a larger pan, 40-50 minutes. Once cooked, invert the cakes onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
- Ice and decorate your cakes using buttercream or frosting of your choice. Decorate with more whole or crushed oreos.
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