White Cake

White cake is a little less sweet than your typical vanilla cake, but it's a great jumping-off point for angel food cake, your standard vanilla cake if you substitute whole eggs for egg whites, shortcakes, and more!  For example, adding eggs will help with rising, but adding too many (not realizing, for example, that two egg whites are the same ass one whole egg) can make your batter too runny so it won't set up right.

My favorite white cake recipe is a tweaked version of the Betty Crocker recipe, made slightly sweeter for my own tastes.

To start:

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 egg whites

1. Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Always. This is, unless otherwise noted, the temperature you bake at.
2. Grease and flour your baking pan.
3. Add all your ingredients (except the egg whites) to a large mixing bowl and beat for 2 minutes on high speed (though maybe start slow if you don't want to wind up covered in flour). Add your egg whites and beat for another 2 minutes.
4. Pour your batter into the pans and bake for 30-35 minutes (or 17 minutes for cupcakes).

Then cool your stuff if you want to frost it.  Really cool it to room temperature, not just like five minutes.