Birthday Cake Club: Confetti Cake!

Classic nostalgia with a slight chocolatey twist.

Hi Bakers!

This month’s Birthday Cake Club recipe is all about the fun. Colorful sprinkles throughout this cake put the “fun” in funfetti - a mashup of fun and confetti.

For this version, we have three layers of moist buttermilk cake, milk chocolate filling, and an ultra creamy frosting that’s decked out to fulfill our rainbow sprinkle dreams. Here’s the extra fun part about being an adult, you don’t even have to wait until your birthday to have a birthday cake!

If you were a child of the 80/90’s (hi, it's me), then you’ll recognize this as homemade Funfetti. A sprinkle cake by any other name, Rainbow Chip or confetti perhaps, is the gateway to birthday party nostalgia for many. Is it the colorful freckles in the cake, imitation vanilla flavor, or waxy nubs in the frosting? Honestly, it was the Dunk-a-roo like frosting for me. 

Are Funfetti and Rainbow Chip the same? If you delighted yourself with these products growing up, you would know they are definitely not. Funfetti is trademarked by Pilsbury while Betty Crocker lays claim to Rainbow Chip. Both provide a cake mix which is essentially white cake with added sprinkles, but it’s the accompanying tubs of frosting that polarize fans. 

Funfetti frosting is a can of vanilla icing with a segregated packet of sprinkles that you stir in yourself, not unlike granola into a yogurt parfait. Rainbow Chip, however, has the colorful, white chocolate adjacent chunks right in the frosting. When the folks at Betty Crocker discontinued this fan fave, there was a mild uproar in the canned frosting community. Even after bringing a version back to supermarket shelves, apparently it’s just not the same…

So what do we do? Make our own! I actually did enjoy those pre-made mixes in my youth, but now I am excited to share my revised, homemade version. I started with a tender buttermilk cake. I think technically Funfetti is a white cake so that the sprinkles “pop” more after baking, but this recipe is enriched with egg yolks and real vanilla extract. 

For the frosting, I went Funfetti-style and folded sprinkles into a whipped buttercream. I added a bit of cream cheese for an ultra creamy texture and a little tang to offset the sweetness. The filling uses a small portion of the buttercream that is mixed with cocoa powder for a chocolate twist. It might not have that authentic “birthday cake” flavor, which I’ve read is essentially imitation vanilla, but I know you will love this sprinkle-filled cake nonetheless.

The Best Sprinkles for Confetti Cake:

For the frosting, select any sprinkles that you want. This part is all about appearance and taste. But for the cake layers themselves, you want to pick something that will keep its color and remain suspended throughout.

Quins - These types of sprinkles are flat, colorful, and come in a variety of shapes. They are most recognizable as being round, flat, and sequin-like. I like these best for funfetti cake because the colors pop and don’t bleed.

Sprinkles - These rod-shaped varieties are typically multi-colored or chocolate. They can be a bit waxy in texture, but bake up well in confetti cake. Add these at the very end of mixing and fold gently to keep the colors from bleeding and turning the batter blue/grey.

Nonpareils - These super tiny, multi-colored sugar balls are also known as Hundreds and Thousands (what it feels like when you accidentally spill them on your kitchen floor). These will melt into the batter and are not recommended for baking in cakes. 

Be wary of naturally colored sprinkles. The colors tend to fade and disappear after baking.