This regional Philly Fluff Cake gets a layer cake transformation! A trifecta of fats makes for a balance of flavor and texture, making this Philly Fluff Cake your new go-to golden yellow cake!
Standards can’t be static. And why should they? Traditional desserts, such as this Philly Fluff Cake, is the perfect dessert to change up. Hold up. What’s Philly Fluff Cake? Well the cake has nothing to do with Philadelphia, but originates from New Jersey. It’s a bundt shaped cake, sometimes marbled with chocolate, and dusted with powdered sugar.
You may think that this cake would be dense, but the combination of shortening, butter, and cream cheese make for a magically light and, well, fluffy cake! To highlight the unique tang of the cream cheese in the batter, I omitted the chocolate and continued the tangy flavor in the frosting.
Baking this Philly Fluff Cake will be the perfect cake to start new tradition an old cake for the new year!
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- 3 cups cake flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoon fine salt
- 15 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks, 6 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup shortening
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 9 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups (3 ½ sticks, 14 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 8 ¼ cups powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
- 1 to 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease three 8-inch cake pans with baking spray, set aside.
- Sift cake flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat cream cheese, butter, and shortening on medium speed until pale and creamy, about 5 minutes. Scrape bowl and paddle as needed. Lower speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl, beating in vanilla. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients, scraping the bowl as needed.
- Divide batter between prepared pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating halfway. The cake should be slightly golden and toothpick inserted should come out mostly clean with a few moist, not wet, crumbs. Let cakes rest in pans for 5 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter and cream cheese on medium-high speed until well blended, about 3 minutes. Gradually add powdered sugar on low speed. Scrape bowl and paddle as needed. Beat in vanilla and salt. If it is too thick, add heavy cream a tablespoon at a time. Raise speed to medium-high beat for final 30 seconds. Refrigerate until assembly.
- Bring frosting to room temperature. Keep ⅛ cup frosting white. Tint ¼ cup frosting green, ¾ cup frosting pink, and the remaining frosting blue.
- Dollop a bit of frosting on a cake board. Secure first cake layer, pipe a perimeter of blue frosting, filling in circle with pink frosting, use an off set spatula to even frosting. Repeat process with second layer. Top with final, third cake layer. Base ice cake with blue frosting. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. Frost cake with a final, thicker, coating of blue frosting. Refrigerate for a final 10 minutes. Use a shell tip to pipe rosettes, garnish with green leaves and white dots.