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From the food editor: A chat with Molly Yeh, and an attempt at her Funfetti Cake

 
Funfetti Cake, made using food blogger Molly Yeh's recipe. Photo by Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor.
Funfetti Cake, made using food blogger Molly Yeh's recipe. Photo by Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor.
Published March 27, 2017

When setting out to make a Funfetti Cake, you need to channel your most whimsical inner self.

This is not going to be a decadent chocolate wonder.

It is a very white cake, in which there has been a sprinkle explosion. And it is evocatively delicious in a way that conjures burning wax birthday candles and colorful childhood cakes.

The reason to make a Funfetti Cake from scratch is the same reason I cook anything at all: It's fun.

There are also lower costs and healthier ingredients to consider, but if I didn't enjoy cooking on some level, I bet I could find a way to rationalize those reasons away. The point is, making something indulgent like cake in your own kitchen is not something cooks do because it's the easiest way to go about getting dessert on the table.

Just ask Molly Yeh, a cultishly adored food blogger who began blogging in 2009 and has since appeared on the Today show multiple times and released a cookbook called Molly on the Range. (The cover shot is her posing with a Funfetti Cake.)

Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor

Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor

Yeh loves to bake, and she particularly loves to bake cake. She rose to prominence in online cooking circles when she was asked by Food52 to create a Funfetti Cake from scratch.

"I'm on a mission to break down this misconception that baking has to be rigid," she said by phone recently. "You can have some fun with it."

When she set about making this very specific type of dessert, she thought it would be easy. For many of her cakes, she uses standard recipes she has developed for bases like vanilla and chocolate.

"I thought I could just use the standard vanilla cake and add sprinkles," she said. "The first time I made it, the cake was yellow and the sprinkles left streaks. It didn't have that extra nostalgic quality. It didn't look good."

To more closely replicate the Funfetti Cake she grew up eating — the whiteness, the distinct artificial flavor — she realized she needed a thicker, whiter batter. She used butter instead of oil, to keep the batter thick, and ditched egg yolks to ensure a lighter color. She knew that Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City (where she lived for years ) used imitation vanilla instead of pure vanilla extract, so she used that to mimic the box flavor of the cake.

"And then I went crazy with the sprinkles and tried every single sprinkle that I had," Yeh said. "I made so many cakes, I got to the point where I was just testing half batches, or smaller cakes to test the sprinkles. It took months."

Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor

Michelle Stark, Times Food Editor

The result is the recipe here, which I made for my husband's most recent birthday, to much magical fanfare. A slice revealed white cake perfectly dotted with sprinkles, the old-fashioned kind you'd pile on a bowl of ice cream. Plus, it was quite easy to make, no mixer needed to create a batter that smoothed out quickly. Actually, it felt a lot like making a box cake mix, complete with sinfully delicious bowl-licking.

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"A lot of the cakes have developed into what they are because of laziness," Yeh said. "I have made some stuff that's so you don't need every measuring cup in the house. They don't rely on stand mixers. With these cakes, it's the easiest possible way you can do it.

"There's a misconception that baking has to be rigid. It does have to be measured, but it's okay to mess up. As long as the general ratios are there, you're going to be fine."