This fluffy and tender Confetti Snack Cake, with colorful sprinkles, and a tangy cream cheese frosting is just what you need, even when it’s nobody’s birthday!
Sometimes you just want a little bit of cake. I mean, for a small family (or one person) a big layer cake is just too much pressure and there’s no way you can finish an entire sheet cake before you forget what life was like before there was The Cake.
As a result, I’ve been really stepping up my snack cake game. It’s just enough cake for our small family (or just me, depending on the cake reason). So, when I found myself needing just a bit of birthday cake (for reasons), this Confetti Snack Cake was born.
It’s a perfect eight inch square of fluffy white cake, studded with bright colorful spots of sprinkles, and covered in just the right amount of tangy cream cheese frosting. And I (we) will finish it long before I (we) could ever have too much.
Pandemic Pantry Tips:
- If you don’t have cake flour, you can fake it! Measure out 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour and remove 2 ½ tbs. Replace it with 2 ½ tbs of cornstarch. Tah-dah 🎉
- No almond extract? You can use vanilla bean paste or extract, or you can skip it altogether. The End.
- No buttermilk, no problem. You could also use sour cream or plain yogurt in place of the buttermilk. Or heck, just use plain milk. At the end of the day, it’s still gonna be a delicious cake.
Let them eat (more) cake!
Confetti Snack Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 4 egg whites, room temperature
- ¼ cup room temperature unsalted butter
- ¼ cup neutral oil, such as canola or safflower oil
- 1 ½ cups cake flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
- ½ cup buttermilk, room temperature
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- ⅓ cup rainbow sprinkles (I found a nice big container in the aisle with ice cream toppings at my local Mega Market)
Cream Cheese Frosting (bookmark this for when you need an emergency small batch of frosting. You never know 😉)
- 4 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
- 4 tablespoon cream cheese, room temperature (this is ¼ of a block of cream cheese, or 2 oz)
- 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tablespoon milk or cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare 8x8” square pan with baking spray. If you plan to remove the whole cake from the pan to serve, line the pan with parchment paper, leaving some to overhang the edges to easily remove the cake. Or you can skip lining entirely and just leave the cake in the pan for frosting and serving. And eating in one go with a fork.
- Beat egg whites at medium speed until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
- In a large-ish bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together. Using a hand mixer (or stand mixer) combine the butter and oil with these dry ingredients until it has the texture of wet sand. This should take 2-3 minutes.
- Mix the almond extract with your buttermilk and add them both to the dry ingredients and fold with a rubber spatula until it is all combined. You’re not going to get rid of all the lumps and that’s okay. Those lumps are just some larger butter bits. Trust me, those butter bits will incorporate into the cake during baking and all will be well.
- Gently fold the egg whites into the batter just until you don’t see any streaks of white. Fold in the sprinkles (also gently), just until evenly dispersed. You don’t want to over-stir the sprinkles because they will start to melt and smear into less attractive color streaks 😖
- Pour batter into prepared pan. Bang the pan on the counter a couple of times (startling your pets and family members) to remove any big air bubbles. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.
- Bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the pan (if you want) and allow to fully cool before frosting.
- Using your hand mixer again (you did wash the beaters, right?), beat together the butter and cream cheese. Beat in the sugar ½ cup at a time. Add the milk or cream and mix in. Beat all together on high speed until fluffy and light.
- Slather the frosting all over the top of your cake, making nice swirlies if you are so inclined. Sprankle with more sprinkles if desired. Cut a slice and light a candle on top. It’s someone’s birthday somewhere. Google it if you need to. Make a wish and blow out the candle. Consume. Feel good about it 🌈
The nutritional and caloric information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It does not assert or suggest that readers should or should not count calories, and should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s or doctor’s counseling.
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