Easiest Vanilla Birthday Cake Recipe for ONLY $5 | $5 Budget Recipes

Bold Bakers in LA birthday cakes are so expensive. They can cost upwards of $60, $80, $100. It's insanity. I had to come into my kitchen and show you how this year you can skip the expensive birthday cakes and make your own tender, beautiful cake at home for less than $5. And it's going to be even better than those store-bought bakery ones. This is part of my new series where I show you how to make normally expensive baked goods for around $5. All this pricing is based on big supermarkets like Walmart, Albertsons, Ralphs. So if you shop there, then you're going to get the same pricing. So for the cake, we're starting out with all-purpose flour, which is 38 cents, which is pretty crazy. Next we're going to add in our sugar for 59 cents. It's a bit of sugar, but it's going to make a big cake. Next we're going to add in cornstarch, which is just 15 cents. The cornstarch added to the all-purpose flour makes your cake really tender. It's like using cake flour here in the US, but the thing about it is cake flour is expensive, so we're making our own for cheap. Baking powder to rise our cake, 12 cents. A little bit of salt, not even a cent. And then we just want to whisk these ingredients together. For our wet ingredients, we start out with two eggs for 36 cents. Whole milk, 24 cents. Now for the secret ingredient, vegetable oil, 48 cents. So I say secret because, you know, vegetable oil in cakes makes them really tender and moist, and it makes them last a little bit longer, makes them stay fresher for longer, which is really nice. Because I'm trying to be cost-effective with this cake, I had to substitute the butter, but not substitute flavor or quality. It still makes a delicious cake. Next we're going to add in vanilla extract, 71 cents. And yes, you still can buy good quality vanilla extract, and it will just cost 71 cents for this cake. So with your wet ingredients, like we always do, give them a mix-up beforehand, so they are well combined, and then just go straight in to your dry ingredients. Now mix this batter together. Briefly, we don't want to overwork it, we don't want to toughen it, we just want to hydrate all that flour. So before I finish mixing that completely, we're going to add in our sprinkles. Here I have some Jimmies, but what I'm going to do is take out a tablespoon of this amount, which was a quarter cup. We're going to set those over to the side for the top, and we still have loads to add into the batter. I like to use Jimmies because they don't bleed throughout the cake, which just makes them look better. So I'm just going to fold those in, just like that. Make sure all that flour is hydrated, like I said. So with that batter, we just want to divide them between our cake pans. Make sure that your cake pans have been buttered and lined, and even floured, which helps. Two 8" cake pans, I like 8" because it kind of makes a stout or cake. You can do 9" cakes, but you're going to get thinner cakes. So the main reason I'm making birthday cake this week is because it's actually Bigger Bolder Baking's 11th birthday, which is so hard to believe. 11 years on YouTube, 11 years out there making videos. We have like 900 videos over this time. It's pretty insane. If you're new to Bigger Bolder Baking, welcome to the community. Get comfy because you have a lot to catch up on. So divide it evenly between the two pans. Look at that! It looks great, doesn't it? Gorgeous. Sprinkles on top. Beautiful. Let's get this into the oven. Bake your cakes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Celsius for roughly around 30 minutes or so, until they're firm on top and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Our timer went off, but I can also smell our cakes and look how beautiful they look. They're gorgeous, a beautiful golden brown. They rose up really nice and you can see our sprinkles on the inside. I'm going to let these cool down in the tin, then I'm going to transfer them to a wire rack where you want them to cool down completely. Just an FYI, you can actually make these the day before you need them and it'll actually be much easier to decorate them or they freeze really well so it's up to you. So while our cakes are cooling, it's the perfect time to make our frosting. Once you make this frosting, you do want to use it straight away. So this is seven minute frosting. Now this frosting is really fast, but the reason I chose it is because that doesn't contain butter. It contains egg whites, which gives you this lovely kind of meringue-like frosting. So it's inexpensive, it's also delicious. So you start out over on the stove top and over a double boiler, we're going to add in all of our ingredients. So first off is our sugar, which is 53 cents. Now this frosting will cover your entire cake. And two egg whites for 36 cents. Sometimes I already have those in my fridge so they can be free. Light corn syrup, not even a scent. This helps to whip up your frosting and make it a little bit more pliable and easier to work with. A smidge of cream of tartar, not even a scent, and this helps to stabilize your frosting and make it really thick. Next we're going to add in a little bit of water, which might seem a little bit funny, but it actually helps dissolve the sugar, it's really important. And lastly a pinch of salt, and this actually also helps to stabilize the frosting. So the reason we're doing this over a double boiler is because we want to heat through those egg whites and we want to dissolve this sugar. So we're going to keep on stirring it with a spatula for around three minutes or so. If it's still grainy, keep going. But we're just going until that sugar has dissolved. You can feel it and you can see it. We do not want this mixture to get super hot, otherwise our eggs will cook. So the color will be kind of a cloudy white, but as you can see, mine is getting looser and I can tell that the sugar has dissolved. I also like this method because for those people who are a little bit worried about consuming raw eggs, this is the perfect way to deal with that. Okay lovely, this is ready, I'm going to turn off the stove, move over to the countertop and we're going to whip this up. So to make this frosting, you do need a mixer, a stand mixer is better. You can also do a hand mixer, but you might not get as much air as you would from a stand mixer. I will tell you that it took a little bit longer than three minutes for my sugar to dissolve. So anywhere between like three and five. Now we're going to pop on our whisk attachment like so and then we're going to whip this up on high speed. And the reason it's called seven minutes frosting because it should take around seven minutes to whip up. So one thing I love about this frosting, it's very versatile, it's like a blank canvas. So if you'd like to add food dye into it or you could even add some essence into it like bubble gum flavor or peppermint or whatever you feel like, some orange or something, it will work really well because it's like a blank canvas. There you have it, my timer just went off for seven minutes. Look at that, beautiful frosting. The thing about this is people often ask about buttercream, can I make it less buttery or can I make it less sweet? If you're looking for something that's a little bit lighter and almost meringue like, check this out, super easy, inexpensive to make and really fast. Okay, lovely. The last thing we're going to do is add in our flavor which is a little bit of vanilla extract and that is 47 cents in there. I'm just gonna fold that in. So check this out, this frosting that's going to decorate an eight inch two layer cake costs one dollar 46 cents. I mean it doesn't get much better than that. You saw how easy it is, just some basic ingredients and it's going to be really delicious. Our cakes have cooled, let's bring them in, it's time to assemble. So our cakes are looking fantastic, they've cooled down. Before we decorate them, I'm just going to level the tops. So that just means just a little bit off the top just to make sure they're nice and even so when we decorate them we're going to end up with a flat cake on top. Some people don't level theirs and that's totally fine too. It just makes it easier when you're decorating and also stacking them. And obviously this is not to be thrown away, it is to be enjoyed. Here I have a turntable which makes life so much easier when you're decorating cakes. And I'm going to put down my layer on the bottom, dollop on our frosting. Now make sure you kind of divvy this up evenly where you have enough to decorate the whole cake. I'm gonna go with my palette knife, look at that. Not only is it a lovely frosting, it's actually really easy to work with. You can go on with our layer on top. Obviously what I like to do is flip it over so you end up with this lovely flat top. And then for the exterior of the cake, start at the very top and bring it down the sides. Just like this. Working from the top, bring it down the sides. My tip about cake decorating is don't overthink it, do it fast and try not to go over your work as best as you can because that's when the crumbs start to appear. And if you decorate a day old cake, you will get less crumbs. Fill in any patches that there are. Decorate it nice and quickly. That literally took me two minutes and I'm gonna stop there because I don't want to tempt fate. I'm going to carefully move it from my turntable to my cake stand that I plan to serve it on. And remember those tablespoons of sprinkles? We're gonna scatter those over the top. So it's nice to know by looking at it there are sprinkles on the inside. And there you have it, our birthday cake and guess what, it came in at under $5. The total for the frosting of the cake and everything was $4.86. That is insane to think how you can make a good quality delicious cake at home rather than buy an expensive one at the store. And this one, you're gonna love it even more because it was homemade. I've always said that I am not the world's best cake decorator but I have to say I am particularly delighted with myself on how this turned out. It looks amazing, it was easy to make and inexpensive. Who would love this for their birthday party? Because this is a celebration cake, don't forget to put a few candles on top. When you slice into this cake you're going to see the beautiful speckled sprinkles throughout and the contrast with the frosting and the cake. As you can see by me cutting into it is an incredibly moist cake and that's due to the cornstarch that we used and also the oil. Just looking at this it's scream celebration and it is the perfect way to celebrate our eleventh year of Bigger Bolder Baking. Bold Bakers let me know in the comments below what other recipes you'd like to see me make for $5 and you might see it in an upcoming video. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon.