Bizcocho Dominicano — Print Recipe

A moist, buttery yellow cake soaked in a rum-orange syrup and covered in a fluffy meringue frosting, the essential cake for Dominican birthday celebrations.

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
Syrup: 1 cup orange juice, half cup sugar, 3 tbsp white rum
Meringue: 4 egg whites, 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, pinch cream of tartar

Instructions

1 Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
2 Mix flour and baking powder. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour.
3 Add vanilla and almond extracts. Pour into two greased and floured round cake pans. Bake at 175C for thirty minutes until golden.
4 Make syrup by boiling orange juice with sugar until dissolved. Remove from heat and add rum. Poke holes in warm cakes and pour syrup over.
5 For meringue frosting, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, beating until stiff and glossy.
6 Stack cake layers, fill and frost generously with meringue. The meringue should be tall and swirled dramatically.

Did You Know?

No Dominican birthday is complete without a bizcocho, and many Dominican bakeries in New York specialize exclusively in this style of cake for the diaspora community.