About This White Vanilla Dot Cake Recipe
Unlike most dot cake recipes, I don’t instruct you to bake a large sheet cake and cut out individual circles. Instead, I designed this small batch dot cake recipe to make just two mini dot cakes from the start. That means less waste, less mess, and fewer dishes! If you’re looking for an easy homemade dot cake recipe, this is it.
To create this recipe, I watched multiple review videos and studied photos of the original viral dot cakes from Butterfield Market. I also analyzed the ingredient list from The Dot Cakes, the Long Island bakery that supplies the market’s dot cakes. Then, I tested several versions in my own kitchen. Throughout that process, I found that baking the batter directly in 8-ounce cake pans gives the cleanest shape and most consistent results. The batter itself is intentionally simple: it comes together in one bowl with just a spatula and takes about 5 minutes to mix.
Even though it’s made entirely from scratch with real ingredients, my recipe for homemade dot cakes have the soft, fluffy texture and nostalgic vanilla flavor that fans of the original dot cakes will love!
Looking for more small batch recipes that yield small portions? Check out Hummingbird High’s small batch baking archive! Popular recipes include these Small Batch Blueberry Muffins (which were featured in the New York Times)!
Let’s Talk Key Ingredients
To make the famous dot cakes at home, I recommend a handful of specialty ingredients:
- Cake Flour. When developing copycat professional cake recipes, I typically use cake flour. Why?Cake flour is responsible for the light-as-a-cloud texture of bakery-style cakes. My favorite cake flour is Swans Down Cake Flour. But if you don’t want to go to the store, make your own cake flour at home with all-purpose flour and cornstarch! Check out my recipe: Homemade Cake Flour.
- Clear Imitation Vanilla Extract. Many years ago, I learned the secret behind bakery-style white cakes when baking this Milk Bar Birthday Cake: clear imitation vanilla extract. Clear vanilla extract gives white cakes the nostalgic, box mix cake mix flavor that people know and love as well as a picture perfect white crumb. But in a pinch—yes, you can just use pure vanilla extract.
- Rainbow Nonpareil Sprinkles. Dot cakes are known for their signature crunchy layer of nonpareil sprinkes. I bought a big bag of nonpareils online at Amazon. They offer a bunch of color combinations from different brands that you can use to customize your dot cakes!
My Cake Pan Recommendations For Dot Cakes
According to my obsessive stalking online, Butterfield Market’s dot cakes measure 4-inches wide and weigh around 8 ounces (227 grams). That means you need at least two 4-inch round cake pans (or other baking vessels like ceramic ramekins or mini cast iron pans that can hold at least 8 ounces) to make my homemade copycat dot cake recipe.
I don’t have 4-inch cake pans, but I do have these 4-inch mini cast iron pans from Staub that are similar in dimension to the required cake pans. However, I don’t recommend using cast iron for baking. In my experience, the cast iron takes too long to heat up in the oven and too long to cool down once outside of it, leading to cakes that puff up too much in the center and overbake easily.
So my recommendation? If you plan on making this dot cake recipe regularly, definitely invest in the cake pans below:
Fat Daddio’s 4-Inch Cake Pans
How To Make The Recipe (With Reference Photos)
Baking and Assembling The Dot Cakes
Even More Tips and Tricks
My Best Recipe Tips To Help You Successfully Make My Dot Cake Recipe
- I’m always looking for ways to reduce my dirty dishes. So here’s a neat trick for this recipe: melt the butter first, in the bowl you’re planning on making the batter in. That way, there’s no need to dirty an extra dish! Just add the rest of the wet ingredients for the batter, then the dry ones. Boom—you’ve made the batter!
- My dot cake recipe instructs you to use 1 ½ Tablespoons of canola oil in the batter. Unfortunately, most measuring spoon sets only come with the following measures: ¼ teaspoon, ½ teaspoon, 1 teaspoon, and 1 Tablespoon. So what the heck is a ½ Tablespoon?
Don’t panic! A ½ Tablespoon is equivalent to 1 ½ teaspoons. That means you need 4 ½ teaspoons of oil for this recipe.
Get the Recipe: 2 Serving Dot Cake Recipe (Only Makes 2 Cakes!)
Ingredients
For The White Cake
- ½ cup plus 2 Tablespoons (2.5 ounces or 71 grams) cake flour
- ⅓ cup (2.35 ounces or 67 ounces) granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 Tablespoons (2 ounces or 57 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- ¼ cup (2 ounces or 57 grams) whole milk, at room temperature
- 1 large egg white, at room temperature
- 1 ½ Tablespoons (.75 ounces or 21 grams) canola oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons clear imitation vanilla extract
For The Vanilla Frosting and Sprinkle Topping
- 4 Tablespoons (2 ounces or 57 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ¼ teaspoon clear imitation vanilla extract
- 1 cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) confectioners' sugar, sifted
- pinch kosher salt
- 1 Tablespoon whole milk, at room temperature
- ¼ cup (2 ounces or 57 grams) rainbow nonpareil sprinkles
Equipment
- 2 (4-inch) round cake pans
Instructions
- First, make the dot cakes. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Whisk the dry ingredients for the cake batter. In a small bowl, whisk together the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
- Whisk the wet ingredients for the cake batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, milk, egg white, oil, and vanilla.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to gradually mix in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined.
- Assemble the cakes for baking. Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans; if using a digital scale to measure out the batter, note that this recipe makes around 10.6 ounces (300 grams) of batter. Pour 5.25 ounces (150 grams) of batter in each pan.
- Bake the cakes. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes. When done, the top of the cakes should bounce back when gently pressed and a skewer inserted into the center of each cake should come out with a few crumbs attached.Cool completely in the pans on a wire rack before assembling the cake.
- Once the cakes are cool, make the vanilla frosting. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and vanilla for the frosting on medium-low until soft and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.With the mixer on low, gradually add the confectioners' sugar and salt for the frosting and beat until combined. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl. With the mixer on low, add the milk for the frosting and beat until just combined. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl once more, then beat on medium-high until the frosting is creamy and smooth, 2 to 3 minutes.
- Assemble and decorate the cake. Use an offset spatula to cover the top of the cakes with the frosting completely. Garnish with sprinkles.
- Serve and store. Serve immediately, or, if you want the signature crunchy shell that you can scrape with your spoon, let the cakes "set" for at least 2 hours to allow the frosting and sprinkes to harden. The cakes will keep at room temperature in an airtight container for 3 days.
buy the book
Weeknight Baking:
Recipes to Fit your Schedule
Over the past several years of running Hummingbird High, I kept a crucial aspect of my life hidden from my readers: I had a full-time, extremely demanding job in the tech world. In my debut cookbook, Weeknight Baking, I finally reveal the secrets to baking delicious desserts on a tight schedule.
