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.

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!

Pink Champagne Cake {Scratch Recipe}

BY Melissa and Bebe

This flavorful Pink Champagne Cake will make any occasion feel more special!

Prep Time: 20 minutes mins

Cook Time: 28 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15 servings

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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.

Notes

A Note about the Buttercream...

*We made a double batch of buttercream because of the amount of piping in our cake design.  You can cut the recipe in half if you'd like.

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