This Butter Pecan Cake bakes up into three tender vanilla–buttermilk layers filled with buttery toasted pecans and covered in a rich vanilla buttercream. It has the classic Southern-style butter pecan flavor—deeply toasted nuts, real butter, and a soft crumb—that makes it perfect for holidays, birthdays, or Sunday dessert.
Why this cake works
Toasting the pecans in butter before they go into the batter is a technique used in many butter pecan layer cakes, because it intensifies the nutty flavor and adds a subtle caramel note. The cake itself follows a traditional creaming method with butter, sugar, eggs, and buttermilk, similar to other Southern butter pecan and pound-style cakes that rely on buttermilk for a moist, tender crumb. A simple vanilla buttercream keeps the focus on the buttery pecans, echoing recipes that choose buttercream over cream cheese when they want the pecan and brown-butter notes to shine.