Basic Butter Cake Recipe

I just got myself an oven and I’m overjoyed! It’s been so long since I’ve baked – at least a couple of years, ever since I got married and moved down south. For a person who has grown up around a mother with a passion for baking, and who has also inherited said passion, living without an oven had been torture. I wanted to use my new oven immediately and since my kenwood mixer is still in KL, I decided to make a simple butter cake first. No point killing myself beating ingredients until my arms come off.

This recipe makes a moist cake that smells and tastes absolutely amazing, and is also very simple to do! I’ve also shared the recipe for chocolate marble cake here for I feel they are both very much related. Besides, marble cakes are so much more interesting than just plain butter cake, don’t you think so? (the chocoholic has spoken!).

Ingredients for a basic butter cake

• 200g self-raising flour – add in a pinch of salt
• 200g castor sugar
• 250g butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 4 tbsp of milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease and line a 20cm cake tin and place aside.
2. Beat butter and sugar till white and creamy. Add in eggs one at a time and beat till combined.
3. Mix in milk and vanilla essence and gently fold in the shifted self-raising flour.
4. Pour batter into prepared cake tin. Bake for 30-35 minutes until an inserted wooden pick comes out clean.

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Here’s the additional things you need to make a marble cake.

Additional ingredients for a marble cake

• 3 tbsp milo or 3 tsp cocoa powder
• 4 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp chocolate emulco

Method for making a marble cake

1. Follow the steps for making a basic butter cake until step 3.
2. Mix the milo, milk and chocolate emulco until it becomes a paste.
3. Take out 1/3 of the batter and stir in the chocolate paste.
4. Place 1/3 of the white batter in the pan. Layer the chocolate batter over it. Top with the remaining white batter.
5. Using a knife, swirl the chocolate batter into the white batter to incorporate it in a marble effect.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes until an inserted wooden pick comes out clean.

I love to eat butter cakes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It’s so sinful. *sigh*