Old-Fashioned Butter cake

Ah, butter cake. Who can resist a really good butter cake, made with real delicious butter with a texture that's not too spongy or too dense. I know many butter cake lovers out there love the old-fashioned butter cake made simply with eggs, sugar, flour and butter without separating the eggs. But I'm now convinced that without the addition of cake stabilisers like Ovalette, it is nearly impossible to get a very good butter cake that is dense yet soft if you don't whisk the egg whites separately. Ovalette is an important ingredient for commercial bakers because with it you can throw everything into the bowl at the same time and the cake will always come out very fine and soft. But what is a food purist to do?

We fight back the use of artificial food aids with quality ingredients and tedious steps such as separating the eggs and whisking the whites for air and volume, and beating the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy. We use the best butter for creaming, and that means canned butter like Golden Churn and Wood Dunn. Wood Dunn butter has been around since I was a kid and when I recently ate a friend's buttercake made with Wood Dunn butter, I ate half her 10" round butter cake, stopping only because my thighs were laughing. Canned butter is more solid than block butter, the latter melting easily in our weather. To whip butter to a fluffy state, it must be well chilled or it'll go soft before your sugar has dissolved in the butter. Chill the sugar too so that when you cream the butter and sugar together, they will hold up longer and thus fluff better. Now about the flour, you can use cake flour or just plain flour. Self-raising flour is good too, and I usually use that. I like my butter cake au natural so I don't add vanilla essence to it.

This is an old recipe handed down by friend to friend and I can't even remember who gave it to me. I checked it against the many buttercake recipes that I have and this is the simplest, most basic one that gives excellent results. You can use this recipe and add lemon juice (1 tablespoon) and grated rind from a lemon to make lemon buttercake, you can turn it into a choc marble cake but adding 2 T sifted choc powder to half the batter, or add about 8 oz melted good quality choc to make it a fabulous choc cake. You can add poppy seeds or raisins for a fun bite, and rum or cointreau for a grown up, classy butter cake.

For the die-hard old-fashioned butter cake people, you can add the eggs whole without separating them to get a denser cake. For those who want a lighter cake, take away 2 oz flour. See, it's a one size fits all cake.

This recipe is specially for MP and another reader who asked for it. Now that we are done with butter cakes, we'll be testing out several pound cake recipes (which are simple in principle but more tricky to make) next. Stay tuned.



Old-Fashioned Butter Cake
12 oz/ 360 g chilled butter (1 small can Golden Churn or Wood Dunn)
9 oz/270 g chilled caster sugar, (original recipe was 10 oz)
9 large eggs, separated*
11 oz/330 g self raising flour**, sifted
2 oz/60 ml milk***

* use medium sized eggs if you like your cake denser and add them whole without separating. Large eggs here are about 85 g each.
**or use 8 to 9 oz for a lighter cake. If using plain flour, add 1 1/2 teaspoon double action baking powder
***use orange juice instead of milk for a citrus flavored cake, or water for choc cake.

Prep: lightly grease the base of a 10"/25 cm square or round cake tin and line bottom with paper. Oven at 160 to 170 C.

1. Whisk egg whites with 3 oz/90 g sugar and 1/2 t cream of tartar until soft peaks or stiff peaks if you like a softer cake. (If you have two bowls, whisk the egg whites after you have creamed and mixed the butter mixture in step 4.)

2. In another bowl, beat butter and remaining sugar by machine until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides a few times. Check to see if sugar has dissolved before going to next step.

3. Add the yolks one by one (or whole eggs if a heavier cake is preferred), beating well after each addition and then add the liquid (milk).

4. Fold in the flour in 2 or 3 batches ( I added the flour in one go --as usual, Quick Step Terri--so it wasn't well-blended in and there were tiny holes in the cake).

5. Fold the stiff egg whites into the butter mixture until well-blended but don't over-do it or the whites will deflate.

6. Pour batter into prepared cake tin and bake 1 hr 10-15 minutes until wooden skewer plunged into middle of cake comes out clean.