High Altitude Gluten Free Vanilla Birthday Cake (GF)

A high altitude tested, gluten free version of my best vanilla cake, that's soft, fluffy, buttery, and moist.

All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.

No ratings yet

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 30

Total Time 50

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings16

1 ½ cups granulated sugar
½ vanilla bean, seeds scraped
3 ¼ cups gluten free flour (1:1 or measure-for-measure) fluffed, spooned and leveled
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 ½ cups whole buttermilk, room temperature
½ cup unsalted butter, melted, and then cooled for 10 minutes
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350F, position a rack in the center of the oven, and spray the bottoms of three 8-inch cake pans with non-stick baking spray.
For a smaller cake, you can make half the recipe in three 6-inch pans.
In a large bowl, measure out the sugar. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean pod and use your fingers to rub the seeds into the sugar until very fragrant and the seeds are evenly dispersed throughout the sugar.
Set a fine mesh sifter over the bowl of sugar, and sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Use a whisk to combine the dry ingredients well.
In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, oil and vanilla extract until smooth.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk until smooth and combined, about 10-15 seconds. Divide the batter between the cake pans. Tap a few times against the counter to pop any large air bubbles.
Bake the cakes for about 20-25 minutes, or until a cake tester or a toothpick comes out clean, and the tops spring back when lightly touched.
Set the pans on a wire rack, cover them loosely with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely before frosting. When ready to frost and assemble the cake, remove the cakes from the pans.

In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter for 1 minute until smooth.
With the mixer running on low, add the powdered sugar by spoonfuls, the meringue powder and the salt, mixing until thick and combined.
Add the vanilla; increase speed to medium and whip for 4-5 minutes, scraping the bowl down several times, until light and fluffy. Add the milk only if needed for desired consistency. Note that in warmer weather, when the butter is softer, you'll rarely need to add the milk.
Fill and frost the cooled cakes with the buttercream.

The cake photographed in this post is a smaller 6-inch cake, made from half the batter.
To decorate my cake, I left 1/2 cup of buttercream white, and tinted the rest pink. I mixed 1/4 cup of confetti sprinkles into the pink buttercream, then frosted the cake. For the piped border around the bottom of the cake, I used tip 18. For the small drop flowers on top of the cake, I used tip 1M.
Leftover cake should be stored in an airtight container or cake carrier, at room temperature, for up to 3 days.
If you omit the vanilla bean from the cake, you should increase the vanilla extract to 3 tsp.
If you don't have buttermilk, simply use whole milk instead, and replace 1 tbsp of the milk with lemon juice.
GF flour is very compact in the bag, so be sure to aerate it before measuring it. To measure correctly, first dump the flour into a separate bowl, and aerate it with a whisk. Then, lightly spoon it into your measuring cup before leveling off the top. Never scoop the flour directly out of the bag using your measuring cup, which will pack too much flour into the cup, resulting in dry baked goods.
The video in this recipe card is for my original vanilla cake recipe, as the making of the batter is the same process.

Keyword Cake, GF, Gluten Free, High Altitude, Vanilla Bean