Rainbow Sherbet Cake – Tender yellow cake layers with raspberry lime curd and orange buttercream.
Classic Yellow Cake
A Classic Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting may be basic but it’s one of my favorites! I didn’t always love a yellow cake, though. It wasn’t until I teamed up with my friend Brooke Eliason from Female Foodie a few years ago for a collaboration that I even considered making a yellow cake of my own.
Yellow cake with chocolate frosting is Brooke’s favorite cake. As part of our collab, I created my own yellow cake recipe, in hopes to make it the best yellow cake she’s ever had. (And I think I did!) This yellow cake is tender, sweet and flavorful thanks to a good amount of egg yolks, sour cream, cake flour, and both clear vanilla extract and butter extract.
No Cake Left Behind
After creating my Classic Yellow Cake, it quickly became a popular one to do in my cake classes at Orson Gygi in Salt Lake. On one occasion, I had extra layers after class. Of course, I never let cake go to waste, so I decided to incorporate the layers into a new cake.
Recipe Development with Westin
As I thought about how to use the extra yellow cake layers, I asked Westin if he wanted to help me come up with a new flavor. He jumped right in and quickly helped me decide on a raspberry lime curd for the filling. We also talked about a lime buttercream, but when we got started on the frosting, I realized I didn’t have any lime flavoring. Westin and I went through what I did have and chose orange emulsion to go in my basic vanilla buttercream.
You guys! Oh. My. Gosh. The combination is out-of-this-world good. With one bite, I immediately thought of the rainbow sherbet I used to get as a kid at Baskin Robbins and it made me smile ear to ear. I’m beyond thrilled with how this cake turned out.
As for decorating this cake, I wanted to mimic the ice cream we all know and love. I used pink, electric green and orange food gels from Americolor.
Some Helpful Tips
Using a soft filling like a curd can be tricky when stacking your cake. Here’s a few tips to make sure your cakes with fillings maintain structure and don’t slide around:
- Always put frosting between the curd and the cake layer so the curd doesn’t seep into the cake. You want distinct layers.
- Pipe a rim of frosting around the edge of the cake to create a barrier around the filling. This will ensure your filling doesn’t ooze out the sides as you stack more cake layers on top. The rim of frosting also helps support the next cake layer.
- Don’t overfill your cake with the soft filling. Putting too much filling in between the layers will cause it to slide around, even with that frosting border. Instead, add just enough for a thin layer and then save the rest of the filling to scoop onto the plate as you serve each slice of cake.
Hope you love this cake as much as I do!
Enjoy!
Hi Courtney! I love your cakes & look at your perfection of an Instragram daily. I am currently looking for the perfect recipes to make a vanilla cake with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream layers this week. Would this yellow cake recipe work for that? Want to make sure I pick something nice and light/fluffy so it’s not too dense with the lemon. Thanks so much!!
I actually think my Lemon Poppyseed Cake without the poppyseeds or my white cake from my funfetti cake would be best with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream.
This cake looks delicious. I’m wanting to try the raspberry lemon curd. Can I use frozen raspberries instead of fresh? Thanks!
Yes you can
What size cake pan are most of your cakes? Also, is it totally necessary to use unsalted butter??
I typically use three 8″x2″ cake pans and yes, use unsalted butter because you’re adding salt in the recipe elsewhere and you’d have a lot of salt if you use salted butter.
Hi Courtney! I was wondering if I could make a straight raspberry curd from your curd recipe by omitting the lime juice and zest and maybe adding another cup of raspberries?
Sure!