Italian Cream Cake Recipe
This amazing Italian Cream Cake recipe has so much flavor from chopped pecans, coconut, cream cheese frosting and more!
Servings: 15 servings
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 1 cup 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 5 large eggs separated
- 2 cups (242g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon (5g) baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (242g) buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
- 1 cup (85g) chopped pecans
- 1 cup (75g) flaked sweetened coconut
FOR THE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 16 oz cream cheese (total weight 452g), softened (We used two 8 oz packages, full fat)
- 1 teaspoon 4g vanilla extract
- 6 to 6 ½ cups 690g to 747g powdered sugar
- 1 cup chopped pecans, toasted (Some bakers like to fold the pecans into the frosting. We prefer to add them to the frosted cake as decoration.)
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 8x2 inch pans. You can also use 9 inch pans.
- Mix butter at medium speed until softened and smooth. Gradually add sugar, mixing on medium speed 4 to 5 minutes.
- Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition until the yellow of the yolk is blended. Add Vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, add flour, baking soda, and salt, whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture (that is 3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 additions of buttermilk) After last addition, mix just until blended..
- Fold in pecans and coconut; using a spoon or spatula until combined.
- Beat egg whites at high speed until stiff peaks form. Using a spatula or spoon, gently fold into batter.
- Spoon batter into three 8 or 9″ round cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then remove and cool on wire racks.
For the Cream Cheese Frosting
- Cut the butter into slices and add to the bowl of your mixer. Beat on low to medium speed until the butter is softened and smooth.
- Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add to the butter, beating at low to medium speed until incorporated.
- Add the vanilla. Gradually add the powdered sugar beating on low speed until blended.
- Increase mixing speed and beat until fluffy, approximately 1 minute, don't over beat. If beaten too long it will become very soft. If this happens, just refrigerate for 10 to 15 minutes.
- This frosting will pipe best if used while still very cool. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly (do not microwave) and remix.
- Will frost a 3 layer 8 or 9 inch cake. Cool layers before filling and frosting.
- We filled and frosted the cake with cream cheese frosting. Chill at any time during the decorating process to firm things up (15 minutes in the freezer or longer in the refrigerator).
Decorating the Cake
- After the cake was completely frosted, we pressed the remaining chopped pecans around the bottom half of the cake. The traditional way to frost this cake is to stir all the pecans into the cream cheese frosting then frost the cake.
Notes
Freezing the Layers: These Italian Cream Cake layers can be wrapped in a layer or two of plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil and frozen for up to three months- they will taste as fresh as the day that they were wrapped. To thaw, move to the kitchen counter, still wrapped. After 30-45 minutes, remove from wrapping and thaw to desired amount for assembling.