BAKED Ultimate Birthday Cake |

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Happy 2017! I made us this marvelous vanilla sprinkles cake from Baked Occasions to celebrate.

The glorious BAKED Ultimate Birthday Cake graces the cover of Baked Occasions and is another example of Matt and Renato's genius for taking favorite desserts to a higher level.

We were not a funfetti birthday cake household when I was growing up. In grade school, I was always jealous of the other kids whose parents made them the magically delicious, incredibly sweet funfetti cake fresh from a box. I especially loved the Rainbow Chip frosting. Even now that I've reached independent adulthood and can make my own birthday cake, I've never made a funfetti cake from scratch (or from a box). I guess we're still not a funfetti birthday cake family...

Enter the BAKED Ultimate Birthday Cake, our Sunday morning challenge for today. January 1st, 2017. Celebrating the New Year is at least as exciting as celebrating a birthday. Especially now that I've turned 29 a few too many times.

We were invited to a kids + adults New Year's Eve party, which was the perfect occasion for confetti cake. Since the estimated head count for the party was 20-25, I opted to bake this cake in 2 9-by-13 inch pans instead of the typical 3 8-inch pans. The sheet cake size is easier to slice and serve a horde of children under 10 (and is a more moderate dose of sugar). Baking in the larger pans took only 25 minutes at the same temperature (350 F).

We were staying with friends for the holiday and the grocery store I picked for shopping turned out not to carry sprinkles, so I had to raid our friend's stash. Instead of 1 cup of rainbow sprinkles in the batter, I used ⅔ of a cup of sprinkles. It was enough to give the confetti look and get the sprinkles flavor, maybe just a little less sprinkles-in-your-face than the specified amount. For topping, she found some rainbow chip sprinkles and pink sanding sugar, so although I didn't quite get the covered-in-sprinkles effect, we still managed a fun display. This was also a much less time-consuming approach than the comprehensive sprinkles coating called for by the recipe.

I have made this cake before, almost exactly one year ago, but at the time I skipped the all of the sprinkles. To be honest, I loved this cake a lot more without sprinkles than I did with the sprinkles. Especially the sprinkles in the cake batter. I love vanilla flavor anything, and I found the sprinkles obscured all the glorious vanilla I had added to the cake batter and the frosting I used (which wasn't the recipe-standard, amazing and time-consuming cooked buttercream frosting from BAKED, but rather a vanilla cream cheese frosting since I received strong encouragement in that direction).

Although it was a touch too sweet for me, I highly recommend this funfetti cake. It is a tremendous rendition of the funfetti cakes I remember eating and it's certainly better than any similar cake you could buy. My advice - definitely buy high-quality sprinkles since they impact the flavor so much. Or make BAKED's ultimate birthday cake without the sprinkles in the cake batter. This version won rave reviews from everyone who tried it, including adults who aren't normally cake lovers and ten discriminating kids. (The kids were particularly enthusiastic about the rainbow chips.)