Italian Cream Cake (Scratch Recipe)
Everybody needs a go-to classic Italian Cream Cake recipe! We have the perfect recipe for you, and it is DELICIOUS!
There's just nothing better than the combination of coconut, pecans, and cream cheese frosting. It's no wonder that this is one of our most popular layer cakes!
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
There are so many reasons to love this Italian Cream Cake recipe. Here are just a few:
- Cake recipes with pecans and coconut are so flavorful! Delicious combination.
- Wonderfully light texture thanks to the whipped egg whites in the cake batter.
- Classic cakes like Italian Cream Cake always feel extra special, and make the perfect birthday cake recipes, holiday cakes, more! (We even have two doctored cake mix versions: Italian Cream Bundt Cake and Italian Cream Cupcakes).
How to Make Italian Cream Cake
**You can find the full, printable Italian Cream Cake recipe a little further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat the oven and grease and flour three 8 inch cake pans. We like to also line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper.
- Butter: Mix butter at medium speed until smooth using an electric mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer).
- Butter & Sugar: Gradually add sugar, beating on medium speed 4 to 5 minutes.
- Egg Yolks: Add room temperature egg yolks, one at a time, mixing after each addition until the yellow of the yolk is blended. Then, add the vanilla extract.
- Flour Mixture: In a separate bowl, add flour, baking soda, and salt, whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- Dry and Wet Ingredients: 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) Mix until just blended.
- Pecans and Coconut: Then fold in the pecans and coconut until well combined.
- Beat the Egg Whites and Fold into Batter Beat egg whites at high speed until stiff peaks form. Using a spatula or spoon, gently fold into batter.
- Fill the Pans: 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, or the center of the cake springs back when lightly touched.
Cool the cake layers (we often place them on a wire rack, still in the pans) and turn out after about 10 minutes.
Assembling the Italian Cream Cake
Now that the Italian Cream Cake layers have cooled completely, it is time to put it all together.
To assemble the cake, place the first cake layer on your cake base or pedestal. Spread with a layer of cream cheese frosting using an offset spatula. Repeat for the next two cake layers.
Next, apply a thin coat (crumb coat) of frosting to the top and around the sides of the cake.
At this time, we like to chill the crumb coated Italian Cream Cake in the freezer for 15 minutes (or longer in the refrigerator.) This firms everything up nicely before we apply the second layer of cream cheese frosting.
You can refrigerate your bowl of frosting during this time also if it seems a bit too soft.
Decorating the Italian Cream Cake
Next, apply the second layer of frosting to the chilled cake. Today, we went with a smooth finish for our frosting, but a textured finish is always nice too (as with this ridged buttercream technique)!
When we decorate cakes with a smooth finish, we like to run our bench scraper under very hot water before gliding over the chilled frosting. (This technique is often referred to as the Hot Knife Method).
We then pressed chopped pecans around the base of the cake, and applied stars around the top of the cake using a large 1M piping tip.
Cream Cheese Frosting
We always fill and frost our Italian Cream Cakes with a simple, decadent Cream Cheese Frosting recipe. This is a simple combination of butter, softened cream cheese, vanilla, confectioners sugar, and a pinch of salt.
This recipe makes a great filling and frosting, and we use it on all sorts of cakes, including Red Velvet Cake, Hummingbird Cake, Peaches and Cream Cake, and more!
Consistency of Frosting
Cream cheese frostings are softer than most buttercream frostings and so if it becomes too soft, simply pop the piping bag, bowl, or even the cake into the freezer or refrigerator as needed (for 10 minutes or until desired consistency is reached).
Recipe FAQs
More Classic Cakes
Italian Cream Cake is just one of those good old fashioned cake recipes that everyone needs in their recipe box. We have several other classic cakes that belong on your must-bake list!
Some of our most popular are German Chocolate Cake, Black Forest Cake, homemade Carrot Cake, and our easy Boston Cream Pie from cake mix!
Don't miss our full collection of Cake Recipes, including cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes! Also, if you are interested in cake design, we have hundreds of free cake decorating tutorials as well!
You'll find tutorials for birthday cake ideas, elegant cakes, baby shower cakes, holiday cakes and more!
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!
Italian Cream Cake Recipe
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.
Hi sweet gals, I have been asked to make a full sheet Italian Cream cake. Would I need to double,triple or quadruple this recipe? Thank you for your help!
Hi Carla, I wish we had measured the number of cups in the recipe, I think there is probably 6 -7 cups. A half sheet (12 x 16) needs 12 cups ..... so two recipes for the half sheet. It is easier to deal with two half sheet cakes, you could bake two half sheets, put them side by side to achieve your full sheet.
Good Luck
I made this cake without the coconuts and pecans, it came great. It came out as you mentioned, not good for fondant or carving, but what can you do to it to make it a little denser to put fondant on it. I luv the cake and would like to continue using it.
Oh, you had responded to me in the past the it was too soft to work with fondant but you mentioned to someone else that you can...lol. Ok, which is it? Lol
Hi Rosi, in the comments above it is Claudia's yummycakes saying that it could be covered in fondant. My thinking was that it would be too soft with the coconut and nuts......but it must have worked for Claudia. Someone had also asked if the coconut and nuts could be taken out and I responded that I thought taking out 2 cups of ingredients would be too much removed from the recipe. You have done that and report good result, so that is great to know. Since you have the cake, do you think it seems dense enough? The coconuts and nuts were the reason for my saying "no" to fondant......so maybe it is perfect the way it is now. If you give it a try, let me know.
On the contrary it's still too soft for fondant. That is why I had asked you also if you know how to dense it up for fondant. I would luv to continue using this recipe. My problem is that I love decorating cake, (more fondant than buttercream), not baking, but I know I have to bake before decorating....so that being said, I am so fustrated finding that right recipe for my customers. Can it be taking off 1/2 cup of sugar or adding one more egg, or doing both? Thank you for responding so quick. I love that about you guys.
Hi Rosi, baking is science and I typically don't change recipes as much as I think this one would need to be changed to be as dense as you would like it to be. The beaten egg whites that are folded in add lightness and the buttermilk make a tender cake, but changing these will probably change what you like about the cake now.
I know you are looking for the perfect recipe for your customers.....what comments do you get from your customers with the recipe you typically use.
It's science but it's crazy. A recipe might have 2 c flour but one will have 1 1/2 c sugar and the other 2 c. One will have 5 eggs and the other 6. (Either one)
Anyway, I don't have the time to bake alot so that is why it's taking so much time to find that right recipe. The cakes I have baked everyone has loved but they all had some of cake mixes thrown in and that is what I don't want becasue I don't want to have a bad reputation that I am selling cakes out of cake mixes. They have already started those comments in my job but because I am into more decorating, so as a beginner I was using cake mixes just to get to my decorations.
I am not into chocolate but when I took Fudge Dark Chocolate, I think, from Duncan Hines and threw in a small box of Chewy Brownie Fudge from the same vendor, and OMG! I love chocolate cake now! But just that way.
I have a customer who loves it that way and she is a friend, but can't sell it to anyone else like that. A friend of hers noticed it and was critizing it, yet she ate it all.
I sold the durable choc. cake from your site with Oreos Cream filling and they loved it, but I would of liked to have done the choc. mix I mentioned above with the Oreos. The combination of the tastes would of been better.
I know I don't want to use cake mixes but I'm thinking of throwing in the brownie mix into your Mom's Choc. Cake from Scratch...no coffee, and see what happens.
About the vanilla....I like the Italian Cream but like I said, would like to make a little change to it because it's too soft for fondant. Then the recipe from your site... Classic White Cake I mentioned you about, well I would love to make it softer. It's moist but very dense. It does taste like pound cake. Will people criticize that?
I thank you so much for being there and trying to help me out so I can finally make myself complete and know that I can decorate but can bake good cakes also. Without a good cake, decorations mean nothing. If you have the time, I would love for you to see some of my creations at Facebook.com/simplycakesbyrosi
I am into these big elegant cakes out there but where I live, not too many people are willing to pay what I am dying to do. I'm a beginner, so I have to really move around and give out those business cards, or else how am I going to sell.
Thank you BeBe.
Do you think this cake is sturdy enough to add a fresh fruit filling and fresh fruit on top mixed in a fruit glaze. I need to make an Italian wedding fresh fruit cake. Any suggestions would be super helpful. Thank u!
Hi Ghada, I think that the Italilan Cream Cake would probably not be a good choice for you. It is not very sturdy because of the nuts and coconut in the recipe. I have read that a sponge cake is often used for the Italian wedding
cake.
I made this cake today yummy yummy
Could you makecupcakes out of this? Thank u :-)