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.
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 and Champagne Pound Cake.
Here are a few more of our favorite "Boozy Cakes" (including Limoncello Cake, Pina Colada 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.
Also made cupcakes delish but I only wish they had more crown, otherwise perfection.
Hi Rachel, Thank you for the pictures, your cake and cupcakes look fantastic!! I find that often cupcakes baked from a scratch recipe are more level or have only a slight dome. To get more of a dome on your cupcakes, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. As soon as you put the cupcakes into the oven, reduce the temperature to 350 degrees.
I made a 6" double layer cake using half a recipe to test this after a couple failed recipes for strawberries and champagne cake. This recipe was great! Just sweet enough to pair well with the cream cheese buttercream strawberry champagne frosting i made. I was originally looking for a strawberry champagne cake. Is there a way to incorporate some strawberry puree into this recipe? Either way, thank you for this lovely cake recipe. I will definitely be making this one again! Please ignore the decorating skills or lack there of. I'm still figuring that part out! My warm hands keep melting the frosting through the piping bag :(
Cheers!
I used your recipe to make cupcakes last night. Such a light and fluffy cake! Mine were not at all dry and I baked them for almost 20 minutes at 325 in the convection oven. I did substitute raspberry flavored sparkling ICE water. This added plenty of coloring so I didn't add any more. I do think i would cut the sugar back as I believe the flavored water added too much sweetness. My cakes didn't dome, which doesn't bother me, but I did find that the batter rose nicely and I nearly overfilled a few cups! This was my test run for a bridal shower and I will be making this batter again! Thanks so much!
Hi Kelly, Thank you for posting your thoughts on the recipe. One solution to "hot hands" when piping is to prepare two piping bags and when one bag becomes too warm, place it in the refrigerator for a few minutes and pipe with the second bag. You can keep alternating bags this way until the piping is complete.....so happy you like the recipe.
Hi Jen, Thank you for trying the recipe and posting your thoughts. It is good to know about substitutions that can be used. I am trilled that you will be using the recipe for the bridal shower!!.
If I multiplied the recipe by 1.5 would it be enough for a 3 layer 9-inch cake, and the layers not be thin? Or would I need to double it?
Thanks, JoAnna
Hi JoAnna, This recipe makes 7 1/2 cups batter, multiplying it by half will give you 11 cups batter. This is a link to the Wilton chart, http://www.wilton.com/cake-serving-guide/cms-baking-serving-guide.html. For a 9 inch pan Wilton uses 5 cups cake batter. I don't usually use quite that much. Going by the Wilton chart you will need to double the recipe and you will have some leftover. How many cups of batter do you usually put in your 9" pans. That will help you make your decision.
Hi. This looks lovely and I'm looking forward to baking it tomorrow! Just wondering what your thoughts are on using whole eggs instead of egg whites. I prefer the yolk in cakes and cookies for the richness in flavor and binding the moisture in. Can you let me know how this would alter the consistency of the cake if I were to use the whole egg? Thank you!
Hi Susan, Using egg whites in this recipe give it a light and fluffy consistency and this fits with the idea of a champagne cake. It would be a bit more dense using whole eggs. I hope you like the recipe.
Hi!
I'd like to incorporate some fresh strawberries or a strawberry puree into this cake. I have looked and looked and cannot find a recipe! Someone else asked earlier.
Hello I am making this cake for an engagement party! I need to make it a little bigger to accommodate the crowd! I am planning on using three 10 inch pans. I baked a single from scratch recipe for the cake this evening to try it out using 9 inch pans and they came out a bit thinner and a crispier edge than I was expecting. Do you think doubling the recipe is enough or should I triple it to make the cakes thicker and accommodate for the bigger pans?
hi! I am
Going to make this for a child's cake. Could I substitute champagne for pink soda? Thanks Sandra