Simple Cake Recipe (Easy & Delicious Vanilla Cake)
When searching for a simple cake recipe, it doesn’t get easier than this deliciously moist vanilla cake recipe. All it needs is a few simple ingredients like cooking oil, instant pudding mix, egg, water and vanilla cake mix and you are on your way to the best simple cake recipe around.
When I think of simple things in life, I think of moments that may not amount to much from a monetary standpoint but are worth more than anything else you could own. That’s the way I feel about this simple cake recipe. It brings back memories of a time gone by. Sunday mornings sitting with my Granddaddy and watching him as he tried to teach me how to wiggle my ears! We would be laughing and eating this simple sponge cake Mama made. Life truly did seem much simpler then.
Speaking of simple things, let’s jump into making this simple cake. This easy cake recipe uses a cake mix to keep things simple. Then we add eggs, water, oil, and vanilla pudding mix to ensure it’s perfectly soft and moist, and bursting with vanilla flavor. Once you mix the ingredients together, pop the cake batter into a bundt cake pan and patiently wait for it to bake.
Then you can serve it however you like. You might want to keep things plain, whip up a simple glaze to go with the simple sponge cake, or add fresh strawberries and vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. I’ll leave that choice up to you!
Recipe Ingredients
- Cooking oil
- Egg
- Vanilla instant pudding
- Water
- Yellow cake mix
How to Make a Simple Vanilla Cake
Toss all dry and wet ingredients in a bowl.
Whistle or dance a bit because this recipe isn’t complicated so you can occupy your mind with more lighthearted pursuits.
Mix it all up for about two or three minutes, until well blended.
Now you can grease and flour your cake tin but I prefer to just spray the living mess out of it with cooking spray.
I’m a role model for laziness, I know, but doing it my way gives you at least another 45 seconds with your family :). See? I’m actually just promoting family togetherness!
Pour the cake batter into your bundt cake tin and bake it at 350 for about an hour. Check it at about the 45-minute mark.
Fortunately for me, I have little oven guards.
Let it sit in your pan for 10 minutes before turning it out.
How long should I let the cake cool?
10 minutes is the magic number in cakes.
You should always let cakes cool for that amount of time and they turn out so much nicer!
At this point, you can eat the cake plain, apply a glaze, or serve it this way, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries.
I love strawberry shortcake and a slice of this is the perfect foundation!
To learn how to make homemade whipped cream, see this post.
Storage
- Store the cake, covered, at room temperature for up to 2 days. It will also last in the fridge for up to 5 days.
- Alternatively, freeze the cake for up to 3 months.
Recipe Notes
- As mentioned, use this vanilla cake recipe as a base and you can top it or serve it however you like. Here are some serving suggestions:
- Ice the cooled cake with my 7-minute frosting or creamy chocolate frosting.
- Apply a vanilla glaze (find a simple recipe on my orange cake recipe post).
- Serve with whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream and fresh berries, chocolate sauce, or caramel sauce.
- Simply dust the cake with powdered sugar.
- For a , add some frosting and pop some sprinkles on top.
- To make a , split the between two pans.
- You can totally use this to make a batch too. You’ll want to reduce the time to about 20 minutes though.
Recipe FAQs
Can I make this cake in a 9×13 pan?
Yes, you can make this homemade cake in any size pan you like. I just chose a bundt cake pan because I hadn’t made one in a while. But do whatever cranks your tractor. I am partial to a Texas sheet cake, as is evident here and here.
You may also like these other easy cake recipes:
Chocolate Pound Cake with Fudge Glaze
Chocolate Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting
Pineapple Upside Down Cake (Super Moist)
Ingredients
- 1 box yellow cake mix
- 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix 3.4 oz
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup oil
Instructions
- Mix all of the ingredients together with an electric mixer until well blended.1 box yellow cake mix, 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix, 4 eggs, 1 cup water, 1/3 cup oil
- Pour the cake batter into the greased bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes to an hour.
- Let the bundt cake sit in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
— Charles Mingus
Submitted by Emily. To submit your quote, please click here! Thank you!
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We moved alot, and things always change, I don’t have many things I cherish. One of them is the table my grandfather built for my grandmother. It was a long thick wood table and had bench seats. Momma and I both cried when he sold it. We spent alot of time there as a family It was the most solid wood table I have ever seen. When she passed away and he moved he didn’t have room for it. He kept it in the garage for a while, but then when he moved out of state he sold it or gave it away.
I love the little oven watcher! Treasure these days, Christy. My granny was my main loving memory, we could do no wrong with her. She may be gone for 10 years but anyone who knew her will never forget her. She showed love to whoever walked in her door giving food to each one. Her kitchen was nothing like my mother’s meticulous “Better Homes” style where you were afraid to make a mess. The dishes were clean and sanitary, but there was flour hiding behind the cannisters and in the corners that was shed there as she baked and cooked for us. So a messy kitchen drives me crazy ’cause of Mom but it also reminds me of my Granny and love. Messy kitchens, YEAH!
My thoughts went immediately to a doll who has been with me in every move since childhood. Her legs have long since disappeared, her “skin” is discolored, but she is as beautiful as ever, even tho’ she is somewhere around 62 years of age. She “speaks” a
language of love … of parents, home, growing pains, choices…of memories….. all of which she was a part of…..because she was never left behind and makes them more wonderfully real!
Hey! I have a tulip just like you have on your stove! And matching salt and pepper shakers. They were my husband’s mother’s – who passed away when he was 6 mo. old. I’d love to know more about it – it’s fireking I think?
I love your site…your writings, your recipes, your great humor and attitude for life! Thanks for all you do!
addition to above..that’s a tulip bowl. a grease bowl I think?
More clarification on my comment (ROFL! I’m on a roll today!) What I would like to know more about the tulip greasebowl…how do you use it? Is it safe to save grease? What kind of grease? What kind of uses for saved grease? Do you have to refrigerate it? Probably dumb questions…but hey…isn’t the only dumb question the one that you don’t ask? Or something like that….thanks!!
Hey Debby!
What you have was sold as a “Range Set”, meant to sit atop your stove. I have the grease jar with lid (as shown in the pic) and a set of splash proof mixing bowls. You’re right, they’re all Fire King!
I would dearly love to own the salt and pepper shakers but they are SO expensive to come by that I’d have to sell a kidney to get them! The grease jar is very difficult to come by intact, and with a lid. You’ve got yourself a real hard to find treasure in that set, not only from a monetary standpoint but also that it belonged to someone so special and you were fortunate enough to have it as a remembrance of her!
I don’t put grease in my jar, although I could. Fire King was made exceptionally well but its just too valuable for me to risk it. I have actually taken to using mine as a salt crock on the stove. Back in the old days women always had a little box or crock of salt handy to season the cooking with.
One thing to be aware of, if you wash any of your pieces in the dishwasher it will mar not only the pretty finish on the glassware but also scratch up the tulips on the design.
I hope you enjoy yours! If you do decide to use it as a grease pot, I’d put an empty tin can inside to use as the actual vessel that holds your grease. 🙂
It’s so cool that we both have these!
Gratefully,
Christy
P.S. Your Range Set was manufactured in the fifties. 🙂 Lots of good people were manufactured in the fifties too!
A salt crock…that is PERFECT!! Believe it or not – I’ve been thinking I wanted something to keep salt in like that for cooking…and wondering what to use – with a lid, easy to get to. I’ve seen those used on cooking shows and thought they seemed so handy. And here I had the perfect thing all along. So glad you mentioned that! I want to use that bowl, but didn’t really want to keep grease like that. We are in the process of moving, and I believe I will start using it as a salt crock in my new house! THANK YOU!!
I’m smiling at the memories but with “watery eyes”! My Mom would bake a “simple” box cake mix (yellow), ALWAYS in a 9×13 clear glass baking dish. It would not be turned out on a platter, just frosted with canned chocolate frosting. She would serve this for family on Sunday afternoons at 4:00pm coffee time! This tradition continued even as my children were growing up. I can’t serve any other flavor of cake in the baking dish this way or make the same yellow cake with chocolate frosting in any other shape (just doesn’t taste the same)!!!
Blessings and the joy of simple things to you!!
I was very blessed when I was younger to have 3 grandmothers all living at the same time. My dad’s mom had 16 children and she was always cooking seems like. Can you imagine having that many children. Lets just say I have lots of relatives. But I do remember her always having a pan of homemade biscuits under a cake plate on the stove and she always took the middle out of the biscuit before she ate it. Now my mom’s mom, my Nannie is still here with me. She is a wonderfully cook she use to always make sweet and sour ham balls for easter. I have her class ring. We have 4 generations to graduate from the same high school. My grandmother in in the 1948 class. My great grandmother it was just being with her at her home. She would cook and manage all her affairs on just a little bit of money. How she did it I do not know. It was very peaceful and I had no worries when I was with her. She always kept vicks vapor rub on her somewhere. After she passed I was out standing near our water garden and I kept smelling this aroma. I told my husband, that Mamaw was with us becuase I could smell her. Come to find out it was some lillys that my husband planted. Now everytime I smell them I know that my grandmother is smiling down on me from heaven. I have some of her jewelry and a coke bottle with a shaker top on it that she used when ironing and her pie plate. Thanks for the easy pound cake recipe.
Oh no okay people are going to think I live in a backward country or something. Haha we have cake mix but we just don’t have Duncan Hines and very little Betty Crocker. BUT I can tell you right now that I have a tub of Betty Crocker chocolate fudge frosting in my fridge which really should be thrown out. I’ve had it for awhile!
I tell you Christy I don’t think you’d be impressed with our supermarkets. No baking mixes, no frozen biscuits or Rotel. I already have plans to stock up on food items to send home. Last time it was Crest flavoured toothpastes 😉