Best Recipes Using Cake Flour

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 is milled from soft wheat and typically has a lower protein content of 7-8.5%. Meanwhile, all-purpose flour generally has a protein content closer to 10-12%. 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 regular flour. Cake flour is also almost always bleached during the milling process to weaken the proteins in the flour, which also contributes to a light, more delicate crumb.

As a note, pastry flour has a protein content somewhere in between cake and all-purpose flour (8.5-9.5% protein). It’s typically unbleached (which means it won’t absorb as much liquid as bleached cake flour) so it’s not an ideal substitute for cake flour in a recipe.

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 Swans 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 the chocolate cake 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.