Culinary Institute’s Simple Recipe for the Ultimate Birthday Cake

You'll never use cake mix from a box again after learning how easy it is to make bakery-quality cake at home.

Birthday cake is the one dessert that even the least enthusiastic baker is forced to make from time to time. Most people just stop at the grocery store and get a box of Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker, follow the directions and hope for the best.

Those pre-mixed cakes are ok, but they're never as good as a cake from the local bakery. But according to Chef Egan from The Culinary Institute of America, with just a little extra effort you can actually bake a cake that's as good or even better right at home.

It all comes down to ingredients, says Egan. Those boxes include preservatives and chemicals to keep the mixes fresh. That's the trade off you have to make if you just want to add some eggs and water and call it a day. Making a cake from scratch may be slightly more work, but not nearly as difficult as you may think.

Chef Egan explained the ingredients that goes into her cakes during a Facebook Live appearance on Monday.

So if you're ready to try baking a cake from scratch we've posted the official yellow cake recipe from the Culinary Institute of America below. Good luck and let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear how your cake comes out. But we'd love even more to actually give it a taste!

Yellow Butter Cake
Makes one two-layer cake

• Cooking spray for greasing
• 3 1⁄2 cups cake flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature
• 1 cup whole or low-fat milk (divided use)
• 4 large eggs
• 2 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat two 8-inch cake pans lightly with cooking spray.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and 1/2 cup of the milk. Mix on medium speed until smooth, about 4 minutes, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

In a separate bowl, blend the eggs, egg whites, the remaining 1/2 cup milk, and the vanilla extract. Add to the batter in three additions, mixing for 2 minutes on medium speed after each addition. Scrape down the bowl between additions.

Divide the batter evenly between the 2 pans. Bake until the layers spring back when touched lightly in the center, 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove they layers from the oven, and cool completely in their pans on wire racks. Release the sides and bottom of the layers from the pans with a narrow metal spatula or a table knife before unmolding.