Butter Cake

Many of you have written to us over the years asking for a butter cake recipe and many fiascos and blunders later, here’s one that yields a soft, fluffy and most importantly, buttery cake.

Although there are a few steps you’ll have to follow to a T, which we’ve detailed in the instructions below, making butter cake is actually rather straight forward.

The quality of butter you use is important too, as it can contribute to texture and richness in addition to taste, and in our recipe we’ve used President French unsalted butter, which we got from one of our partners S&O (Standard & Origin).

Branded as France’s No.1 butter, President has won a lot of accolades for its quality over the decades. And it’s won our hearts too, because it gave our cake a really nice crumb structure, deep buttery flavor and a fabulous aroma.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 125 grams President French unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup & 2 tbsp. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla essence
• 3 tbsp. milk

Instructions:

1. First get the butter out of the fridge and let it soften. We left ours on the counter for around half an hour and it was good to go. Softened butter would be a bit cool to the touch and when you press it with your finger, there should be an indentation. Cold butter won’t work and warm butter won’t work either.   
2. While you wait for the butter to soften, sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set it aside.
3. Preheat the oven at 175 degrees Celsius (you’ll have to do this at least 10 minutes before baking) and prepare a 7 inch round baking tray by lining it with baking paper or coating it with around a teaspoon of butter and then sprinkling a tablespoon of flour over it; make sure you cover the whole surface so the cake can come out easily, and remember to tap out the excess flour.
4. Place the softened butter in a mixing bowl and use an electric hand mixer to break it down and get it creamy. We did ours for around 2 minutes on low speed.
5. Now add the sugar to the bowl gradually and every time you make an addition beat the mixture on high speed for around a minute. We added the sugar in three parts. After you’ve added all the sugar beat the mixture on high speed until it doubles in size and turns to a creamish white colour. Ours was done in 7 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl periodically so that everything gets beaten evenly. What you just did is called creaming the butter with the sugar. You can do that with a stand mixer or even by hand. But be warned, if you do it by hand it’s going to take some strength and a lot of time. Also, if this is your first time using a hand mixer, make sure to use a mixing bowl that’s deep enough. Otherwise there’s going to be butter all over the kitchen. We used normal granulated sugar in this recipe because that’s what you get easily here.
6. When you are done with the creaming, add one egg at a time and beat on low speed after each addition, just until incorporated.
7. Add the vanilla essence and mix until just combined.
8. Add around a third of your flour mixture to the bowl and gently fold until combined. You can use a wooden spoon or a spatula for the folding.
9. Then add half of your milk and fold until just combined again.
10. Continue adding and folding in the flour mixture and milk this way until you run out. The last addition has to be flour.
11. Pour the mixture into the baking tray you prepared earlier. Smooth the top with a spatula and tap the tray on the counter to get rid of air bubbles.
12. Place it on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake until the top turns golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. For us this took 40 minutes. But different ovens cook differently, so keep an eye on it.
13. When the cake is baked, take it out of the oven and let it cool down in the baking tray for 10 minutes.
14. Then invert the tray over a plate to remove the cake.
15. Slice and serve.

Note: If you can’t find President French unsalted butter from a shop near you, contact 301 5533 or 301 5522.