If you bought a bag of cake flour for a recipe but aren’t sure how to use up the rest of it, here’s some inspiration! I’ve tested more than 600 recipes across 75+ bake offs–here are 14 of the best recipes with cake flour that I’ve personally tested!
It feels like I’m constantly buying bags of cake flour, forgetting mostly-full bags in the bag of my pantry and buying fresh bags for a random recipe. If this sounds like you, here are a few ideas to use up those half-used bags of cake flour!
Cake flour is one of my favorite ingredients to get incredibly soft cakes and cookies with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Cake flour typically has a lower protein content of 9-10% while all-purpose flour generally has a protein content closer to 11.7%. The lower protein content in cake flour means a lower likelihood of gluten developing, which is often why recipes will call specifically for cake flour instead of all-purpose.
I’ve tested and loved all of the below cake and cookie recipes, all of which do best when made with cake flour rather than any kind of substitute! Note: my favorite brands are either Swan’s Down cake flour or King Arthur cake flour.
Cake Recipes Using Cake Flour
- Coconut cake by Sally’s Baking Addiction: This tender, moist cake has a slightly coarse texture with shredded coconut stirred into the batter. This was voted the winner of the coconut cake bake off!
- Coconut cake by Cooking Classy: This light, finely-crumbed, soft cake uses cake flour along with a mix of butter and oil and coconut extract for flavor. My personal favorite from the coconut cake bake off!
- Cream cheese pound cake from Grandbaby Cakes: One of my favorite cakes from. the pound cake bake off, this pound cake has a buttery, vanilla-y flavor with a light and cottony crumb.
- Crumb cake from America’s Test Kitchen: This velvety yellow buttermilk cake was my favorite find from the crumb cake bake off. Showered in moist, sandy crumbs, this cake hits all the right notes for a delightful snacking cake. (Here’s a non-paywalled version of the crumb cake recipe.)
- Extra crumb snacking cake from Jessie Sheehan: This is a super easy cake to throw together and yields a squishy texture and tangy flavor that’s almost reminiscent of boxed cake. With an outrageous proportion of crumbs, this is a cake for crumb lovers!
- Marble cake from Matt Adlard: While there are things I’d streamline about this recipe (for example, making one master batter and adding cocoa to half rather than making two separate batters), this is a nicely spongy marble cake. The sugar syrup makes it quite sweet, but if you’re after an almost store-bought perfect texture, this is a great loaf cake to try.
- Olive oil cake from King Arthur: A combination of cake and almond flour yields a tight, soft crumb almost akin to a chiffon-like texture with a lovely vanilla flavor. One of my favorite discoveries from the olive oil cake bake off!
- Pineapple upside down cake from Sally’s Baking Addiction: a fluffy, light white cake topped with caramelized pineapple
- Pineapple upside down cake by Baker by Nature: The cake flour lends this a distinctively cakey, almost doughy flavor to this moist, open-crumbed, fluffy cake with oil, sour cream and pineapple juice in the batter.
- Strawberry cake by Kara’s Couture Cakes: one of my favorites from the strawberry cake bake off uses cake flour for soft, cottony layers infused with freeze-dried strawberries for a delicate strawberry flavor.
- Vanilla cake by The Cupcake Project: This finely-crumbed, pillowy soft vanilla cake was the winner of the vanilla cake bake off. With cake flour, sour cream and the reverse creaming method, this is a must-try vanilla cake!
Cookie Recipes Using Cake Flour
- Lofthouse-style frosted sugar cookies by Serious Eats: If there’s one recipe that I think is 100% worth buying cake flour for, it’s these cookies. Bleached cake flour lends a melt-in-your-mouth texture and the high starch content gives these a distinctively sweet flavor. This is one of the best dupe recipes I’ve ever tried and well worthy of its win in the Lofthouse cookie bake off.
- Copycat Levain chocolate peanut butter cookies by Cake by Courtney: A small portion of cake flour gives these cookies an extra tender texture and gooey center. These won the copycat Levain cookie bake off for good reason!
- Chocolate crinkle cookies by Chef Danielle Sepsy: These deeply fudgy cookies are thick with chewy edges and gooey centers. Made entirely with cake flour, these took second place in the crinkle cookie bake off and I can’t wait to make them again this holiday season.
Rebecca
The best and I mean the best strawberry cake is the fresh strawberry cake recioe from Sugar Geek Show!!