That's my favorite cake. But I've never gotten a homemade yellow cake to turn out well. I've tried them all. I always use a mix.

This is my favorite "everyday" yellow cake recipe.

BUTTERSPONGE CAKE

4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
2/3 cup milk
2 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9 X 13 inch baking pan.

Beat the eggs and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until light and foamy. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt in another bowl. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter until butter is melted. (I put the milk and butter in a Pyrex measuring cup and microwave until better melts.) Alternately mix the milk mixture and flour mixture into the egg mixture. Add vanilla and mix until well blended.

Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. (It may be my oven but the cake usually tests done in about 30-35 minutes.) Cool on a rack.

As usual, I'm late, but here's the yellow cake I like.

This one, as is the case with most homemade yellow cakes, is at its best the day it is made.

Sol

Yum, Sol, how could that not be good?

I also like yellow cake with chocolate frosting, or yellow cake just by itself, I have almost convinced myself that it's really a muffin, which is healthy, you know.

I also like Pixistix' Hot Milk Cake, with or without frosting:

Hot Milk Cake - Pixistix
Old fashioned, simple, melts in your mouth!
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 1/4 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
Beat eggs and sugar well. (Pixistix later elaborated that she meant REALLY well, as in 4 or 5 minutes. If you don't do this, your cake is dense) Combine flour with bk. powder and add to egg mixture along with vanilla. Heat milk and butter together until butter melts; gradually add to batter, beating until well blended.
Pour batter into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 for 30 to 35 minutes.

Annie

Our fav is the old Two Egg Cake with Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate frosting. The recipes are available easily online :)

Annie - I love the hot milk cake, but I would not call it a typical yellow cake. So darn good though!!!

Julie, I don't really think it's a yellow cake either, but it's not a white cake or a sponge cake or a chiffon cake, it's got whole eggs and not whites, it has no other flavor like chocolate or fruit so the closest I can come to definition is a yellow cake.

And a darned good cake too. next I suppose you'll tell me that it's not amuffin just because I bake it in muffin tins. (grin)

Annie

I always look in my older cookbooks (anything 1960's and before) when it comes to cake recipes - especially the 40's and 50's - an era when homemade cakes were every homemakers pride. The key to great cakes is using cake flour, and yes, you will notice a difference in the crumb of the cake. Today I mill 3 parts soft white wheat and 1 part spelt or oats to equal a wholegrain version of cake flour. If you use all-purpose flour, for each cup remove 2 tablespoons to lower the gluten content as a substitute for cake flour and keep mixing to a minimum so you don't over-develop the gluten.

Years ago I made Golden Glow Cake and I found a copy of the recipe on line. It's a Kate Smith (God Bless America singer) in an Ann Pillsbury booklet. I have a number of Ann Pillsbury booklets I've collected along the way. Anyway, the link below has the recipe, and I second Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Frosting recipe. I have a number of Hershey's cookbooks as well.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Vintage 55 Favorite Cake Recipes

Annie - too funny. True true, but I keep thinking of the yellow cakes that come out of the box to which Pistix's delicious cake bears no resemblance ;-).

Grainlady, I also agree on the Hershey's frosting.

Julie, you and I can agree on that too, but I don't think any cake from a box bears much of a similarity to cake from scratch. My heathen children actually prefer cake mix cakes, which I find too "fluffy" and to have an oddly chemical-like flavor.

Go figure, you'd think I'd have taught them better!

Annie

When I was a kid, my mom made what the family always called "Plain cake". It was on the skinny (not tall) side, and it was yellow in color. I don't remember her ever frosting it (I hated frosting); we usually had it with strawberries, but the much older siblings recall having a warm "chocolate sauce" with it. My mom quit baking years ago, and by the time I decided to bake a lot and thought of that cake (hubby wanted cake and strawberries one year for his b'day) and asked her for the recipe, she'd forgotten how she made it. In looking at the link Grainlady provided, I wonder if that might be it! Unless she got the recipe from her own mother, she would've been making it by the 40s-50s and on into the 60s (my childhood).

At any rate, I'm just going to have to try it. Just in time for fresh strawberries, too!

Thanks!

Me too - on the Hershey's choc frosting - it's the one.

My daughter felt vindicated by a recent yahoo article extolling the virtues of the "box" yellow cake. The article claimed there is no way to replicate the "taste/texture" that so many of us grew up to know and love.

I admit to growing up on the boxes, but just can't eat them anymore.

Be fun to give the Golden Glow Cake a shot.

I did not grow up on box cakes, but I did grow up on yellow cake with chocolate icing. Thank you one and all for your help. I plan to try each and every recipe!

I was thinking of your yellow cake when I saw this, Sol :) Looked delicious.

My Grandmother and Mom made what use to be called "One Egg Cake". It was cheap and easy to make. My Mom said when she was a child, her mom would spread jam between layers and dust the top with powdered sugar. My Mom always used chocolate frosting. Here is a recipe for one layer.
Clare

Here is a recipe from Farmers cookbook, 1918. My Mom had this cookbook passed down from her mom. I wish I knew what happened to it.

One Egg Cake

1/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
11/2 cups flour
1 egg
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and egg well beaten. Mix and sift flour and baking powder, add alternately with milk to first mixture. Bake thirty minutes in a shallow pan. Spread with Chocolate Frosting.

Here is a link that might be useful: 1918 Farmers cookbook cakes