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.
Do you beat the egg whites til just frothy or til stiff peaks?
Looking forward to making this cake for my daughter in laws birthday❤️
Hi Janet, glad you are making this! We actually don't whip up the egg whites separately. We simply combine the egg whites and other wet ingredients until blended.
We love this recipe- but I also wanted to mention that we just added another version of Pink Champagne Cake last week-- we used it for our Champagne & Raspberries Cake linked below. It uses 3 whole eggs rather than 6 egg whites. Both are great recipes!
https://www.mycakeschool.com/recipes-tutorials/champagne-and-raspberries-cake/
You should be able to get 15 servings.
Hello, sadly I cannot buy Andre Blush anywhere in my area or online. Is there an alternative fruity champagne I can easily purchase?
Hi Thanh! I know very little about different types of champagne ;0) We just happened to buy that brand and were happy with it. I think most champagnes would be fine- we've had people comment on having good results with various sparkling wines, prosecco, white champagne, etc.
How long can I refrigerate this cake before it starts to dry out? Making it for my wedding and would like to do this a 3-4 days ahead of my wedding but don’t want it to dry out really bad.
Thank you!
Hi Jessica, you can bake the cake layers at any time, and freeze the layers individually up to three months before you need them and as long as they are tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and foil, they will taste fresh. When it's time to frost the cake, thaw the layers (still wrapped) for an hour or so before assembling the cake.
If you are wanting to actually assemble, frost, and refrigerate the finished cake well in advance, we like to serve cakes by the third day of putting it all together. The frosting will keep it from drying out. Keep it in an airtight cake dome or sealed bakery box. Hope you enjoy it!
Can you use this recipe for cupcakes?
Hi Liz! This recipe should be fine for cupcakes- they will likely have little to no dome, just like the cake layers. (This is true for most of our scratch recipes).
I made this today. it's delicious, but it took almost 45 minutes in my new oven. I was testing the recipe for a cake for my granddaughter s baptism. I have a cross cake pan that says it holds 2 9" pans of batter. Should I measure out a certain amount of batter to bake in the cross pan? Not sure how to do this. I also used Barefoot Bubbly Pink Champagne instead, and it worked great. Thanks!!
Hi Lisa, If your cross pan holds 10 cups of batter, you should be fine to pour all of the batter into your pan. We have not baked in this type of pan so I can't be sure of the baking time. Hope all goes well.
Great. I'll measure it out. Thanks so much for commenting! The cake really is delicious!!
Hi Patty, I'm sorry that your cake layers deflated, I don't know why that happened. A few possibilities would be over mixing (mix just until wet and dry ingredients are combined and also mix on low speed), expired leavening, or an issue with the oven temperature. Another possibility would be under-baking (the layers are done when they spring back when lightly touched or an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a just a few crumbs attached.)
Just as a side note, we have another champagne cake that is very similar to this one but uses the whole egg rather than just egg whites for the champagne cake layers. I'll link to it below.
https://www.mycakeschool.com/champagne-and-raspberries-cake/
I just made this cake. It was a pretty cake, but, it was really dry. Can you tell me what could have caused this?
Hi JoAnn! I'm sorry, I don't know why the cake would have been dry for you- unless maybe there was an error in measurement or missed ingredient. We do recommend using a digital scale for dry measurements (especially flour) to ensure that you aren't using more than the intended amount.
I love making this cake! So delicious, a hit every time.
Question: I want to take this cake for a family gathering at Easter. If I make the layers on a Thursday afternoon, should I freeze them for an 8 hour trip? Can I make the buttercream ahead of time and carry it, refrigerated, then put the cake together and frost on Sunday?
Hi Kathy! I am happy to hear it. Your plan sounds good to me for both the cake layers and frosting. I would probably just go ahead and bake the layers early (anytime between now and then), wrap the layers individually and freeze. I freeze my cake layers all the time, even if I'm assembling the cake the next day.
You can keep the frosting and layers chilled until you need them on Sunday.