There are few recipes as cheerful as a delicious funfetti cake, speckled with all of the colors of the rainbow! There's happiness in every slice.

You can find funfetti cake mixes at the grocery store, but we love to make it from scratch.

Every delicious funfetti (or confetti) cake recipe has two things in common... you need a delicious white or yellow cake recipe, and lots of colorful sprinkles.

Rainbow jimmies have never let me down for this recipe (or ever, haha). They can easily be folded and distributed throughout the batter without a lot of color bleeding.

Table of Contents

A Quick History of Funfetti Cake

Funfetti Cakes were first introduced in the late 1980's as a Pillsbury Cake mix.

While it's often thought of as a kids cake, I'm here to tell you that funfetti-loving kids grow into funfetti-loving adults!

This cake is popular with my whole family. A scoop of sprinkles has a way of making any dessert more festive!

Let's Make Funfetti Cake!

Today's funfetti cake recipe is based on our White Almond Sour Cream Cake....minus the almond.

As you'll see in our recipe, we're using the conventional method of mixing (rather than the reverse creaming) for nice, fluffy layers. This recipe works great for cupcakes also!

After folding our sprinkles into our cake batter, we divided the batter between three greased and floured pans (lined with parchment).

Freshly baked! I love that this cake makes three layers. After baking, I allow the cake layers to cool (still in their pans) for about 5 minutes before flipping them out.

You can see in the photo that I flipped each cake layer onto its own (wrapped) cake board. This is optional, but I like to freeze my cake layers individually, wrapping the layers while still warm in a layer of plastic wrap followed by foil.

I then pop them into the freezer. Freezing is optional, but we do find that it makes the cakes even more moist!(I wrap the cake boards in foil so that they can be unwrapped and reused)!

Funfetti Unicorn Cake!

I recently made a funfetti cake for our free Unicorn Cake Topper Video Tutorial from our Free Cake Video Tutorials section. Unicorn cakes call for a little extra color!

Ahhh...the Perfect Slice of Sprinkle Goodness

And here is a closeup of our slice in all of it's speckled funfetti glory!

I like using the colorful jimmies as our sprinkles because they leave nice, large dots of color after baking. This is such a cheerful slice of cake!

Enjoy the Recipe!

We hope that you enjoy this delicious Funfetti Cake! If you give it a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!

Don't miss our full collection of tried and true favorite cake and frosting recipes in our Recipes Section! There are so many wonderful recipes to try!

Funfetti Cake Recipe from Scratch

This homemade Funfetti Cake is moist, delicious and so colorful!

Ingredients

1 ½ sticks (12 T) (170g) unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 ½ c (300g) granulated sugar
3 Large eggs
2 tsp. (8g) vanilla extract
⅓ c (73g) milk
1 cup (242g) sour cream
2 ½ c (285g) cake flour
2 ½ teaspoons (12g) baking powder
½ teaspoon (3g) salt
1 cup (or less if you prefer) Rainbow Colored Jimmies

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Grease and flour three 8 inch round baking pans
In medium bowl whisk for 30 seconds the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside
In a separate bowl, combine milk, sour cream, vanilla. Stir with a fork to blend. Set Aside
In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter until softened. Add the sugar and beat 3 to 4 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy. Scrape the bottom and sides of bowl midway through.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each one until yellow streaks disappear.
Add dry ingredients alternately with wet ingredients, mixing until dry ingredients are blended in. Begin and end with dry ingredients (3 additions of dry and 2 of wet).
Fold in sprinkles just until evenly distributed.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with only a few crumbs attached. Let cool in pans 10 - 15 minutes then turn out. Makes 7 cups batter Will hold up to fondant. Works well for cupcakes - cupcakes bake without dome

56 Comments

I love Funfetti Cake too! :-) I like this better then dying cake batter different colours - tastes better too! :-) Very fun and yummy! Thanks ladies for another terrific recipe.

I want a piece!!

Thank you for posting this recipe. I am making a cake next week for my grandson''s 11th birthday and didn't want to use a box mix. This recipe fits the bill and I know it will be fantastic because a few months back I made the delicious cherry cake recipe you posted and another whose recipe name escapes me. Thank you very much.

The picture shows 3 layers and the recipe calls for 2 pans. How does that work?

Thanks for your comments!

@Patty- I'm so happy to hear it!

@Karen- Oops, you're right I'll update it. Sometimes I make two thicker layers but we decided to go with three slightly thinner layers this time.

Can I do this with pound cake? I’ll make my Easter Lamb Cakes like that.

Which icing did you use for the cake

I'm planning on using an Easter egg pan that I got from Wilton years ago for this recip0e. It is in two pieces and takes 1 box of cake mix. For fun I thought I'd write on the top FOR A GOOD EGG. I don't think I would have room for writing Looking forward to baking this one next week.

Hi Lad, We used the Classic Vanilla Buttercream recipe from the recipe section. If you would like a whiter frosting, the Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream would be fine also.

Hi Patty, That is such a cute idea!!

Years ago I used a chocolate ganache to frost the cake. I was pleased with it because it was a nice glossy finish. I used to make daffodils also using various ways. Mostly I mixed granulated sugar dyed yellow and packed it into thimbles. About an hour later I would unmold it and keep checking and when I thought the time was right I picked at the center with a tooth pick until I got a nice thin trumpet. I did mess up a few. Making the petals was easy and then I just glued the trumpet in the middle and set them on paper towel cardboard to dry. I don't think my grandson would appreciate the cake having daffodils, pink roses and daisies. I'm still thinking about what I can do with it. I am not in the mood to make a bakugan or some of the warriors that boys seem to like these days.

Hi there! This looks great! Just wondering why you choose the traditional mixing method instead of the reverse for this cake? Also wondering if you could just add 1/2 cup rainbow jimmies to your 'white cake' recipe without any troubles? I love your white cake recipe so just wondering what this one is like in comparison and if there would be any issue just adding the jimmies to the white cake/reverse creaming method recipe on your site? Thanks so much!!