20 Easy Cake Recipes for Beginners (2024)

Simple White Cake

You'll need only seven everyday ingredients to make this easy, versatile recipe, which you can use to bake a 9x9 cake or a dozen cupcakes. Tip: The recipe says to cream together the sugar and butter. For best results, beat them together until the texture is light and fluffy, about three to four minutes.

One Bowl Chocolate Cake III

It's called a one-bowl cake because that's all you'll need to whip up the batter for this top-rated chocolate cake. Home cook lonnarific increased the cocoa to one full cup, and says it's the "magic amount." Give it the finishing touch with your choice of buttercream frosting.

Crazy Cake

This easy cake was made popular during the Great Depression, most likely because you don't need eggs, butter, or milk to make it. You can follow the recipe directions to mix and bake in the same pan, but if you want to remove the cake from the pan before serving, you should mix the batter in a bowl and pour it into a greased, floured, and lined cake pan.

Grandma's Chocolate Texas Sheet Cake

Remember the impossibly tender cakes Grandma used to make? Recreate the flavor of this soft, perfectly glazed sheet cake at home. This top-notch recipe gets rave reviews for its simplicity and superior taste.

Easy Yogurt Cake

This easy cake uses a carton of yogurt as the measuring "cup" for the ingredients, and is ready in under an hour. Recipe creator Diana Moutsopolous says, "Try adding your favorite flavors or additions. A great one is 1/2 yogurt container mini chocolate chips! You could use lemon yogurt and add lemon zest for a lemon yogurt cake. The possibilities are endless! If you use a flavored and sweetened yogurt instead of plain, consider reducing the added sugar to 1 yogurt container."

Make-Ahead Sour Cream Coffee Cake

You can whip up the easy batter for this cake, pop it into the fridge overnight, and bake it in the morning. Reviewer lutzflcat says, "What a treat it was to wake up, turn on the oven, pop in this coffee cake, and then have a house smelling like cinnamon."

Aunt Anne's Coffee Cake

You don't need a stand mixer to make this easy coffee cake. And just in case you were wondering, coffee cakes don't actually contain coffee as an ingredient. Instead, they're meant to be easy-to-make cakes that you can enjoy with a cup of coffee. Nothing fancy; just simply good.

Carrot Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

This straightforward recipe for carrot cake cupcakes includes the frosting recipe, too, so you won't have to go hunting it down. The frosting makes a generous amount, though. Be prepared to pile it high, or you can simply scale it down to make less frosting.

Chocolate Pudding Fudge Cake

This pantry cake proves that good things can come in small packages. You take a box of devil's food cake mix, add a box of pudding mix plus sour cream, milk, oil, water and eggs. Pour it into a Bundt pan to bake, then drizzle with melted chocolate chips. So easy!

Lemon Bundt Cake

"Lemon instant pudding and lemon-lime soda make this a very moist and delicious lemon cake," says recipe creator Phyllis.

Oreo® Cookie Cake

Turn your favorite chocolate sandwich cookie into a multi-layered no-bake cake with a cookie crust, cream cheese layer, pudding layer, and whipped topping to finish it off.

Creamy Coconut Cake

Everyone's going to think you worked hard on this poke cake, but it takes only 5 simple ingredients to make. Emptynest2 says, "This cake is so simple and soooo good!! I used the end of a wooden spoon to poke the holes in the cake and only used about 3/4 of the liquid. I didn't use all the coconut the recipe called for either...just enough to cover the top well."

Romanian Apple Cake

"This was very easy to prepare," says RITKA15. "The cake looked very lumpy and I thought that there were too many apples but it made the cake very moist and tasty. Was great warm but even better the next day."

Creamy Orange Cake

CeruleanMoon says, "This cake came out moist and delicious and didn't taste like a 'cake mix' cake. I left out the orange flavoring in the frosting though and just used vanilla extract instead."

Banana Split Cake II

Judy calls her creation an "easy no-bake sweet treat. Perfect for those hot summer months when turning the oven on is unbearable." Buzz Buzzard Jr. says you should reserve the drained pineapple juice and use it to coat the sliced bananas to prevent them from turning brown.

Pineapple Upside-Down Bundt® Cake

This festive cake comes together easily with the help of a few shortcut ingredients. Kim Alexander gave this a 5-star rating, saying, "Easy-to-follow recipe and the cake turned out perfect! The cake was also super moist with the added addition of the pudding."

Alice's Easy Blueberry Cake

Sweet, fluffy blueberry cake comes together in under an hour with this incredibly easy recipe. Use fresh or frozen blueberries to create vibrant color and unbeatably good flavor.

Oreo Mug Cake

"This viral 3-ingredient Oreo mug cake recipe is ready in less than 5 minutes — perfect if you've got chocolate cravings and you want it now!" says recipe creator and Allstar Yoly. A simple blend of crushed sandwich cookies, milk, and baking powder results in pure dessert magic.

Southern Praline Pecan Cake

Butter pecan cake mix is the base of of this simple, 6-ingredient recipe. Indulge in rich, Southern-inspired taste that's equipped with chopped nuts and irresistible coconut frosting.

More Inspiration

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