Pink Champagne Cake {Scratch Recipe}
Today we are excited to share a uniquely light and flavorful recipe with you for Pink Champagne Cake.
This elegant dessert, with its moist champagne infused layers & delicious buttercream is perfect for weddings, engagement parties, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve, or any occasion that calls for something special.
If you love champagne, you'll love this recipe. Make sure to check out our Champagne Velvet Cake and Pink Champagne Cupcakes as well!
Table of Contents
Why Pink Champagne Cake? A Quick History!
Southern bakers have been flavoring their cakes with sweet beverages for decades (Lemonade Cake, 7 up cake, etc.) but Pink Champagne cake takes that practice to a whole new level of delicious sophistication.
It is believed that Pink Champagne Cake first originated on the west coast in the '50s and '60s, and was a hugely popular choice for bridal showers, weddings, and bachelorette parties.
There's just something a bit glamorous about a dessert flavored with Pink Champagne, don't you think? The Los Angeles Times printed a Pink Champagne Cake decades ago and to this day it remains one of its most requested.
If you like Pink Champagne, you are going to fall in love with this recipe. While the pink champagne isn't overpowering, the flavor is unmistakable.
We love to fill and frost the layers with our Pink Champagne Buttercream Frosting, but traditionally pink champagne cakes have often been paired with bavarian cream or coconut fillings.
How to Make Pink Champagne Cake
You can find our full Pink Champagne Cake Recipe at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- First, preheat the oven to 350℉ and grease & flour three 8 inch round pans. We also like to line the pans with circles of parchment paper.
- In a medium size bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside
- In another bowl combine the egg whites, champagne, vanilla extract, and vegetable oil. Whisk until blended and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy.
- While mixing on low speed, and the flour mixture and egg whites mixture alternately. Start and end with the dry ingredients. We do three additions of dry ingredients and two additions of wet. Mix just until incorporated.
- Pour into prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted the center comes out clean. Cool in baking pans 10 min. then turn out.
Pink Champagne Buttercream
We frosted our champagne cake layers with a delicious Pink Champagne Buttercream! We made extra since we did a lot of piping with our design. This recipe is so easy, pipes great, and has a light champagne flavor.
It is a simple combination of softened butter, confectioners sugar, pink champagne, vanilla, a pinch of salt, and pink coloring if you'd like!
Recipe FAQs
Champagne Cakes and More
We have several more great champagne cakes to share with you! Aside from today's Pink Champagne Cake from scratch, we also have a delicious, easy Pink Champagne Cake from a mix!
Other popular recipes are our Champagne and Strawberries Cake , Strawberry Champagne Cake, Pink Champagne Cupcakes and Champagne Pound Cake.
Here are a few more of our favorite "Boozy Cakes" (including Limoncello Cake, Pina Colada Cake, Margarita Pound Cake and more) that are sure to make your special occasions more special.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Don't miss our full collection of Cake Recipes, which include our favorite cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes!
If you are interested in cake design, we have so many free Cake Decorating tutorials to share with you as well!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Pink Champagne Cake {Scratch Recipe}
Ingredients
For the Pink Champagne Cake
- 3 cups (342 g) cake flour
- 1 Tablespoon (15 g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- 6 egg whites (194g)
- 1 cup (242g) pink champagne, I used Andre Blush Champagne
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla
- 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil 18 g
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 2 sticks (226 g total) unsalted butter, softened slightly
- Small amount of pink food color I used AmeriColor Deep Pink but any pink would be fine. I added the color with a toothpick, just a small amount will give you blush pink
For the Pink Champagne Buttercream* This is a Double Batch
- 4 sticks (452g total) unsalted butter, softened *See Notes
- 12 cups (1380g) powdered sugar
- 4 teaspoons (16g) vanilla
- 1 teaspoon (6g) salt
- ½ cup (122g) pink champagne
- Pink Coloring Gel of Choice We used a touch of Americolor Deep Pink
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and grease & flour three 8 inch round pans. We also like to line the pans with circles of parchment paper.
- In a medium size bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside
- In another bowl combine the egg whites, champagne, vanilla and vegetable oil. Whisk until blended and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, mix the butter and sugar on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy.
- While mixing on low speed, and the flour mixture and egg whites mixture alternately. Start and end with the dry ingredients. We do three additions of dry ingredients and two additions of wet. Mix just until incorporated.
- Pour into prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted the center comes out clean. Cool in baking pans 10 min. then turn out.
- *Makes 7 ½ cups of batter.
For the Pink Champagne Buttercream
- Cream the softened butter until smooth and lightened in color
- Blend in the salt and vanilla
- Gradually add the powdered sugar with the champagne until the powdered sugar is incorporated. Beat at medium speed 3 to 4 minutes. The texture will become very smooth. If you are tinting the entire batch of buttercream light pink, you can add a very small amount of coloring gel while it is mixing.
- This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of frosting.
Hi Tonya, I'm sorry I can't help you with your question because this recipe is the only champagne we have made so I have nothing to compare it to. We have had many good comments on it. I hope you like it if you give it a try.
I will be baking this cake today for an early Morher's Day treat for my mom. Due to all the positive reviews I'm going ahead with it. It seems perfect for my mother. I will repost after making it myself. Thank you BeBe.
This recipe is a hit! My mother loved it, and even my husband who is not too fond of cake loved it. It's flavor was awesome. It is not overly sweet,which paired perfectly with the sweet buttercream frosting. I topped mine with fresh strawberries and though this cake does not need them I enjoyed the combo even more and think any berry or peach would be nice with this cake.
I have just two concerns: the cake was slightly dry in my opinion (baked for 25 minutes) and yielded just under 7 cups which gave me three thin 8" cake layers. Maybe I over baked it, or maybe I prefer cake a little more moist. How might I be able to achieve a higher moisture content without compromising the flavor? Even with those two issues I am so happy I took the chance on this cake. I really wasn't sure what to expect but it turned out beautiful, elegant, and delicious overall and will be added to my go to cake recipes. Thank you so much for sharing your recipe!
Hi Tonya, I am so happy you gave the recipe a try and thrilled to hear your Mother loved the cake. The next time you make it you could increase the oil to 4Tablespoons (1/4 cup). Thanks so much for posting your thoughts!!
Oh my gosh I jusy made cupcakes with this recipe and they came out perfect!!!! I read comments with people's concerns about them rising so I made the batter ahead of time and let it sit out about an hour while I baked my other cake batter... this recipe is PERFECT and it's a life saver!!!!
Hi
I was wondering if anyone has tried this pink champagne cake for a kids party? If so, did they like it? I heard the alcohol burns away.
Can I use Asti in place of champagne?
Hi Cari, Yes, I think it would be fine to use a sparkling wine such as Asti.
Im planning to make this next week for a two tier cake Im doing. The recipe calls for three 8 inch pans, and Im wondering what depth pans you used?? I typically use 3 inch deep pans. Thanks!
Hi Lynsey- Glad that you're making this! Our pans are 2" deep.
Hi Lynsey,
My pans are 3 inches and the cakes came out perfectly. I hope you like yours as much as we like the cake I made.
Regards
Cari
My cakes ended up doming some (nothing huge, but definitely noticeable). I ended up cutting them down to assemble the cake, but I was wondering if you had any suggestions/ideas as to why they would dome. I baked for 24 minutes in aluminium Wilton's 8" pans that were greased and floured (my edges turned out very brown... I didn't have baking strips and used butter as my greaser for the pans because I was out of shortening). I feel like I lost a lot of cake with the doming and couldn't put my finger on why they domed so much as other people didn't seem to have the same issue. (although I made some awesome cake balls with the cut off tops so not a total loss). Just wondering if you had any ideas.