Time for another recipe folks! In keeping with the spirit of our Royal Easter Show preparations this is my current favourite recipe for Best Plain Cake category.
Of course, if you actually Google Best Plain cake you're not going to get much back. Even if you google Plain Butter Cake you're likely to come with a big old zero. There's a couple of reason for this. Firstly, calling something Plain Cake hardly makes it enticing and so it's a title you're not often going to see. Secondly, in my experience no one in the ole U S of A calls it a Plain Cake either and that's where a lot of the internet baking content comes from.
On the other hand, pop yourself onto Pinterest and search for Pound Cake, Yellow Cake, or even Vanilla Cake, and you'll find heaps of possibilities.
That's where this one was born, or at least adopted. From the overpopulated halls of Pinterest. As always, it was heavily American and way too big for my needs. This is my adaptation of that recipe, and as you can see it bakes into a delicious, light textured anything-but-plain cake with a beautiful crumb and a flat top. Try it and see.
Anything-but-plain Cake
Ingredients: 3 small eggs, or 2 large ones if you're a large egg buyer like me
1 cup of caster sugar
2/3 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, or sunflower or other flavourless oil
2 cups self raising flour 1.5 tsp baking soda a pinch of salt 125 g of soft butter
Method:
Cover up your good clothes, put on an apron if you have one. It makes you bake better. Ready?
Grease and flour your tins, or do whatever you normally do to them - as always. You know your bakeware better than I do. Same for your oven, set it to your regular cake baking temperature, mine is about 180 degrees, and make sure your oven shelf is in the right spot.
Once again, make sure your butter is soft and your eggs are at room temperature. Or if you don't care about that, just use the eggs from the fridge. Whatever!
Electric mixers give the best results and generally I use the whisk attachment for the egg part, and then the paddle attachment for the rest. So starting with your whisk, whip the begeebies out of the eggs and as they start to become fluffy, dribble in the cup of sugar bit by bit. I let this beat for quite a while - perhaps 6 minutes or so - and make sure that all your sugar is dissolved through the egg and it's a nice, thick pale yellow whip.
While it's whipping, sift your SR flour, pinch of salt and the baking powder onto some baking paper.
When the eggs are done, switch to your paddle attachment and very gently on a low speed mix through the very soft butter. Butter that's too hard will not properly mix through the egg whip, and butter that's runny will ruin the froth. Make sure it's right.
Now, on a very slow speed - believe me, I've been entirely covered in flour before by forgetting to do this, and so have my kitchen walls - pour about one third of the flour blend into the bowl and mix it SLOWLY until combined, no more.
Now grab the milk and mix about half of it through the batter in the same slow way, then add half of the flour that you have left. How does it look? Now a little more milk and then the rest of the flour. Keep an eye on your slowly mixing batter. It should have the thickness of something like whipped cream. If that means you have a little milk leftover at the end, then fine. Be gentle.
Now one last thing, pour the vegetable oil into the batter and mix it through in the same slow way. Incorporate completely.
That's it, just a simple plain cake batter. Now, its ready to bake. Get that baby in the greased and floured tin and get it in your preheated oven.
Now this is the important bit. Make a cup of tea and sit down, and don't forget to put that timer on. About 40 minutes is all you need, but I start checking at about 35. Remember, have a quick look, touch it very gently in the centre to see if it's set, and never use a skewer on a Show Cake. It should feel firm to the touch and slightly springy.
PS: You can lightly flavour this if you like - add some vanilla, lemon zest, orange zest, cinnamon, whatever you like. Just a little now, otherwise you'll affect the composition of the batter. Have a go.