Easy Easter Cake with a Swirled Center

5 from 5 votes

Easy Easter Cake with a Swirled Center

If you want an easy Easter cake that’s great for beginners, this colorful swirl cake is the perfect option! A white cake mix gets combined with a couple of additional ingredients, colored, and swirled around for a fun and unique cake that’s simple to make!

Prep Time25

Cook Time35

Total Time1

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: servings

Calories: 355kcal

Author: Britni Vigil

Ingredients

Cake

1 box white cake mix
¼ cup water
4 egg whites
½ cup vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp clear vanilla extract
blue, pink, yellow food coloring (or your preferred colors)
pastel sprinkles, Easter sprinkles or candies

Frosting

½ cup butter (softened)
2 cups powdered sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
2-4 TBS heavy cream
food coloring (optional)

Instructions

Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 9" x 13" baking dish.=
Combine cake mix, water, egg whites, oil, sour cream, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer. Mix on low speed until ingredients are combined, then beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed.
1 box white cake mix, 1/4 cup water, 4 egg whites, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 cup sour cream, 1 tsp clear vanilla extract
Pour 2 cups of the cake batter into the prepared baking dish, then divide the remaining cake batter into three separate bowls. There will be about 1/2 cup batter in each bowl. Add a different color food coloring to each bowl, mix until color is consistent. Use more or less food coloring to get desired color.
blue, pink, yellow food coloring
Use a spoon to drop dollops of each of the colored batters randomly over the white cake batter in the pan then use a butter knife and run it back and forth through the batter to swirl the colored batter into the white batter. Make sure you don't overdo it or you'll end up with one color instead of swirls.
Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 30 - 35 minutes. Cool completely.
Frost the cooled cake, garnish with Easter sprinkle or Easter themed candy and enjoy!
pastel sprinkles, Easter sprinkles or candies

Frosting

Beat the butter in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer until it is light and fluffy. Add salt and mix.
1/2 cup butter, 1/4 tsp salt
Slowly add powdered sugar a little at a time, mixing on low speed until all powdered sugar is added and mixed well with the butter. Scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure the butter gets mixed in well.
2 cups powdered sugar
Next, add the vanilla, and two tablespoons of frosting. If you’d like to add food coloring (I didn’t), you can add it here if you want. Beat for one minute and check consistency. If frosting is too thick, add a bit more cream and continue mixing until frosting is a good consistency for spreading.
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 2-4 TBS heavy cream, food coloring

Notes

Ingredient Notes:

Clear vanilla – it’s important to use clear vanilla in the batter so that the dark color of regular vanilla doesn’t impact the coloring of the cake. You can get clear vanilla at Walmart, most grocery stores, and on Amazon here.
Eggs – I recommend using four egg whites but if you don’t have four eggs, you can also use three whole eggs. You will have a slight yellow tint to the cake but it’ll taste fine.
Butter – it doesn’t really matter if you use salted or unsalted for the frosting but if you do use salted, I recommend leaving out the added salt. You do want to make sure that the butter is nice and soft before you make this frosting – I like to leave it out overnight or for at least an hour.
Heavy cream - if you don't have heavy cream, you can substitute milk but you'll likely only need the two tablespoons since milk is thinner than cream.

Tips:

Store cake in the fridge covered for up to four days. Cake can be served either chilled or at room temperature but the frosting with the heavy cream should be refrigerated.

Switch up the colors and sprinkles and make this cake work for a different holiday as well!

Use a max of three colors that are very different from each other (e.g., pink and blue, not pink and red) so that you can really see the colors and so that they don’t just combine together into a mess.

Don’t overdo the food coloring. Food coloring can give have a really strong taste if overused and you really only need a few drops to turn this white cake mix colorful!

Nutrition