Super moist evaporated milk cake made with few ingredients for an easy, simple delicious cake dessert for dinner or snack or breakfast! The simple yet moist and delicious cake is flavored with vanilla and topped with cherries for decoration. This is one of the most easy, best homemade vanilla cake from scratch (eggless) that is also great for birthday party or holidays if you frost it with chocolate icing or vanilla cream cheese frosting and you may double the recipe to make two layer cakes for parties!

This is a very moist egg free vanilla cake that has a soft texture and sweet flavor from the addition of evaporated milk.
Evaporated milk is rich and creamier than regular milk and it is perfect to be used in desserts for the best flavor and rich taste! Pumpkin pie with evaporated milk is perfect, easy, homemade crustless pie for Thanksgiving dinner dessert or Christmas holidays! I used 12 oz carnation evaporated milk in this vanilla cake recipe, which is perfect to use if you have leftover canned evaporated milk at home. If you want a quick, delicious & simple eggless vanilla cake and if you have any leftover evaporated milk from holidays or anytime, do try this evaporated milk cake.
what is evaporated milk?
Evaporated milk is heated milk with most of it's water content evaporated, leaving mostly the cream of the milk so it's more creamier in texture than milk. It is different from heavy cream because it has gone through the heating or cooking process and the texture is obviously different from heavy cream. It is more comparable to milk in it's liquid like consistency but more creamy like condensed milk.
evaporated milk vs condensed milk - what is the difference between evaporated milk and condesened milk?
The difference between evaporated milk and condensed milk is that while condensed milk is usually sweet with added sugar, evaporated milk is usually unsweetened. In brief, evaporated milk & condensed milk are almost the same while one is sweet and the other is not sweet. When you use condensed milk in recipes, you need to cut on the sugar since the condensed milk is already sweet in taste. When you use evaporated milk to make desserts like cake or pie, you will need to add sugar to make it sweet. You can see pumpkin pie with evaporated milk here and you can see pumpkin pie with condensed milk here! In many dessert recipes, you can use condensed milk and evaporated milk interchangeably or as a substitute for each other, if you take care of adjusting the amount of sugar. If a cake recipe uses evaporated milk & sugar, you may replace it with condensed milk and reduce or skip the sugar. If a cake recipe uses condensed milk, you may replace the condensed milk with evaporated milk and you will need to add sugar too.
evaporated milk substitutes in cakes & desserts
Evaporated milk in this cake recipe and many other dessert recipes may be substituted with equal amounts of condensed milk. However, it is very important to reduce the amount of sugar significantly or totally skip the sugar in these recipes, since the condensed milk is usually sweetened with sugar! In this evaporated milk vanilla cake recipe, you may substitute 12 oz of evaporated milk with equal amounts of condensed milk (or an approximate amount should be fine, and the rest may be replaced with whole milk). When you substitute the evaporated milk with condensed milk in this cake recipe, you can skip the sugar and brown sugar in the ingredients.
easy cake recipes for desserts:
More milk based desserts recipes include milk cookies, instant pot rice pudding, tapioca pudding and more! So here is how you can make easy, eggless, moist and delicious evaporated milk vanilla cake at home.
how to make evaporated milk vanilla cake topped with cherries?
To make eggless, moist vanilla cake with evaporated milk, we use the following ingredients.
ingredients used to make eggless evaporated milk vanilla cake
- evaporated milk 12 oz can
- self rising flour 2 cups
- vanilla extract 1 teaspoon
- butter ½ cup softened (1 stick butter)
- sugar ¾ cup
- brown sugar ½ cup
for topping (optional)
- maraschino cherries 4 to 5
- liquid from maraschino cherry jar 2 tablespoons (for a quick, easy glaze)
step by step instructions
- Add the dry flour to a large bowl.
- In a separate large bowl, add the evaporated milk.
- In a third bowl, place the softened butter, brown sugar and sugar. Mix well to cream the sugar, brown sugar and butter.
- Add the creamed butter sugar mixture to evporated milk and add vanilla extract too, mix everything to combine well.
- Add the wet ingredients mixture (evaporated milk mixture with butter and sugar) to the dry flour mixture, stir to form the cake batter. Make sure the ingredients are combined evenly and there's no lumps of flour or dry flour left at the bottom of the bowl.
- Preheat oven to 325 degree Fahrenheit.
- Prepare a 9 inch cake pan by greasing with little oil or butter and line with a parchment paper.
- Pour the prepared cake batter to the prepared cake pan.
- Place the cake pan in the preheated oven and bake for about 35 minutes.
- Once this is done, increase the oven temperature to 350 degree and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes until the cake is cooked through completely. If you are unsure, insert a toothpick through the centre of the cake and it should come out clean.
- Once the cake is baked, transfer the cake immediately from the hot oven so it won't get over baked.
Allow the cake to cool before you slice or frost the cake as you like! I used a simple cherry decoration using preserved maraschino cherries.
I also glazed the top of the cake with about 2 tablespoons of liquid from the maraschino cheery bottle which worked very well to give a quick, finished look, instead of using sugar syrup or other frostings!
Below you can get the recipe for delicious milk cake for an easy, eggless moist vanilla cake for dessert.
Evaporated Milk Cake With Vanilla, Topped With Cherries
Ingredients
- 12 oz evaporated milk canned
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup butter softened (1 stick butter)
- ¾ cup sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
for topping (optional)
- 5 maraschino cherries or more as needed
- 2 tablespoons liquid from maraschino cherry jar for a quick, easy glaze
Instructions
- Add the dry flour to a large bowl.
- In a separate large bowl, add the evaporated milk.
- In a third bowl, place the softened butter, brown sugar and sugar. Mix well to cream the sugar, brown sugar and butter.
- Add the creamed butter sugar mixture to evporated milk and add vanilla extract too, mix everything to combine well.
- Add the wet ingredients mixture (evaporated milk mixture with butter and sugar) to the dry flour mixture, stir to form the cake batter. Make sure the ingredients are combined evenly and there's no lumps of flour or dry flour left at the bottom of the bowl.
- Preheat oven to 325 degree Fahrenheit.
- Prepare a 9 inch cake pan by greasing with little oil or butter and line with a parchment paper.
- Pour the prepared cake batter to the prepared cake pan.
- Place the cake pan in the preheated oven and bake for about 35 minutes.
- Once this is done, increase the oven temperature to 350 degree and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes until the cake is cooked through completely. If you are unsure, insert a toothpick through the centre of the cake and it should come out clean.
- Once the cake is baked, transfer the cake immediately from the hot oven so it won't get over baked.
- Allow the cake to cool before you slice or frost the cake as you like!
Paula
This cake is very easy to make and comes out super moist. I made it for my book group and it received raves and two requests for the recipe. It's a hit!
Recipe Garden
Hi Paula, I am so glad to hear this! It's great that everyone enjoyed the cake and thank you so much for the feedback! Much appreciated 🙂
June
Is this 12 fl oz of milk ?
Recipe Garden
Hi June, I used 12 oz evaporated milk that comes in the can. It's equivalent to about 1.5 cups evaporated milk. Hope this helps. Thank you!
Jen
This was a great cake. Really yummy hot with cream or caramel sauce or cold with a coffee. Perfect.
Recipe Garden
Thank you so much for the feedback! I am glad you enjoyed this cake!
Anonymous
Cake was easy to make. I feel like it didn't have enough flavor or sweetness **Note I did make this with Swerve granulated sugar and Swerve brown sugar. I added some chocolate chips to the batter also. Still wasn't very sweet. Nice texture though and very easy to make - perhaps I needed more sugar or additional chocolate chips.
Recipe Garden
I guess it could be because the sugar was replaced so maybe you need to use more of the sugar replacement for enough sweetness I think. Thank you!
Linda
Wow! This cake was great! I was confused and had to double check recipe because it did not list eggs or salt. I added several drops of orange flavoring and topped it off with a very simple marmalade glaze. It was a big hit! I’ll be making this again.
Recipe Garden
Thank you so much for the great feedback!! Adding orange flavoring and topping with marmalade glaze sounds wonderful. I am so glad this was a hit 🙂 Thanks again!!
Linda
I posted above about adding a few drops of orange extract and using marmalade glaze, but in addition, I used about 1 1/2 tsp. of honey, and cut a *tiny* bit of white sugar. The honey goes well with the orange flavor.
Recipe Garden
That sounds great! Thanks again 🙂
Robin
what can you substitute for the self rising flour?
Recipe Garden
Hi Robin, if you don't have self rising flour, you may use 2 cups all purpose flour mixed with 2 teaspoons baking powder in this recipe. Hope this helps. Thank you.