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.
My cake didn't dome badly at all and we just cut our level. I always tab my cakes on the counter before putting them in over to keep bubless out of my cake. I also have my own cake release recipe I use on my Wilton pans.
I also use Asti in my cake we like the extra sweetness it gives.
Sorry that happened to yours maybe it was just a one time thing.
I made this pink champagne cake for my granddaughter 5th birthday instead of champagne l uesed fizzy raspberry lemonade.in the cake and buttercream all the family just loved this cake .thank you for this recipe.
Hi June, Thank you for letting us know that the raspberry lemonade worked well with the recipe, if you can't use champagne. I'm happy you like the cake.
Hi Michelle, I think you should lower the baking temperature to 325 degrees and increase the time to 35 to 40 min......check at 35 minutes. Baking strips would be a good idea since the sides of your cake seems to be done before the center. Are you baking in 8 inch pans?
The cake turned out absolutely fabulous! It was for my sister's birthday and everyone had seconds. I ended up using a blush bubbly moscato. Bebe, I used 8" rounds.
That is wonderful!! Thank your for letting us know!!
If I was to use 9" pans, would I use 1.5 of the recipe to have enough for 3 layers?
I'm going to be making this cake for my grandmas 80th birthday this weekend. And I'm making it in a giant cupcake pan, so I was wondering what the difference in cooking time would be?
Hi Keara, I have not bake in the giant cupcake pan but I found information on Wilton's Blog, here is the link You might like to read it as a guide. The cake would be baked at 325 degrees for 1 hour. It gives helpful information so your cake will turn out perfectly. Hope all goes well.
Can not wait to make this cake!! I'm going to make it for an Engagment for 70 people. How much should I up the recipe by?? So excited for this
Hi Kaitlyn, I'm happy you are going to make the recipe! This cake was baked in 8 inch round pans and would serve 24, so 3 times the recipe would cover the 70 servings you need. On the homepage of the site, on the right side of the screen you will see MEMBER RESOURCES. Under that you will see listed HELPFUL LINKS. If you click on that, you will be taken to the Wilton serving and baking chart that I think you will find helpful. Hope all goes well.
I'm soooo excited to make this for a party tomorrow! If I bake it tonight, do I store it in the fridge or on the counter? Should I decorate/ice it tonight or tomorrow?