Best Birthday Cake

The formula

Every ingredient resolved to grams, expressed against the recipe's own base — next to the median of all 51.

	this recipe	typical
fat	158%	88%
total sugar	278%	181%
egg	69%	54%
leavener	2%	3%
salt	2%	1%
liquid	78%	86%
dairy	78%	84%
flour strength	1.0	1.0

Adapts cleanly: dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, nut-free (documented swaps, applied on the dish page)

Ingredients

Weights computed by us.

296 g	2 1/3 cups (296 grams) bleached all-purpose flour,
10 g	2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (*2)
3 g	1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
170 g	12 tablespoons (170 grams) unsalted butter, (at cool room temperature)
350 g	1 3/4 cups (350 grams) granulated sugar
100 g	2 large eggs, (at cool room temperature and separated)
13 g	1 tablespoon vanilla extract
244 g	1 cup whole milk
227 g	2 sticks (227 grams) unsalted butter, (at room temperature)
50 g	1 large very fresh egg yolk, (at room temperature (*3))
4 g	1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
156 g	1 1/4 cups (156 grams) powdered sugar, (sifted)
2 g	1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
170 g	6 ounces (170 grams) milk chocolate, (melted and cooled)

Method: 8 steps, published by handletheheat.com — open the original ↗ or use bake mode for a follow-along with a screen that stays on.

“I make so many of Tessa’s recipes and they are always incredible, but for some reason this cake didn’t work for me! Judging by the reviews, it was likely an error on my part. I used room temp ingredients, weighed everything, so not sure what I could have done ” — a cook, 4.0★

“My birthday was this week on 9/20 and lately this has been my base recipe for birthday cakes - somehow both dense and airy, I think 'springy' would be the best way to describe the texture as it nearly pushes back when you squish it, in a good way! My cake had ” — a cook, 5.0★