Homemade Butter Cake (Recipe)

Some weeks back, both my wife and I went on a baking frenzy and tried to out do each other again. While I promised her that my apple crumble would be better than anything she could dished out at me, I was actually rather worried as the ghost from the past kept haunting me. My first attempt at making apple crumble didn't go as plan and what made it so painful was that there wasn't any comments from the in-laws, uncles and aunties. I could only think that perhaps it wasn't appropriate at that time for them to spit out the crumble hence the silence. It's probably in their poor mouth all the time. Or its better not to say something than to offend someone. Even the nieces and nephews whom I equate to as the local municipal council, MPPP (they clean out anything from the fridge) didn't take the bait either. Nonetheless, after a couple more attempts, I finally got the recipe right. However this time around, I can only take solace the fact that this is probably my wife's first attempt in making butter cake.

Here are the ingredients that she used:

• 250g butter
• 210g castor sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1tbp of vanilla essence
• 200g of self raising flour
• 4 tbp of fresh UHT milk
  

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Grease and line a 20 cm cake tin with greased grease proof paper. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Mix butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs in one at a time and beat them well after each addition. Keep doing this till the mixture is light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla essence.
3. Add in the flour into the mixture and continue to fold until it mixes well with the rest. Add in milk and mix until they all combine well.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level out at all sides except a shallow well in the centre. This is to allow the cake to level up evenly during baking.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 55-60 minutes or until cooked.

I took a shot at the final mixture before it was poured into the baking mold. Being up, close and personal with the mixture, this is as good as any opportunity for saboteurs to rig the recipe. I must say that did cross my mind but in light of the recent Olympic games and the spirit of fair play, the angle got the better of the devil. At least for now...

My wife got slightly irritated as I was hovering like a vulture in the kitchen. The anticipation was just killing me. Finally, the butter cake came out from the oven and filled the kichen with it's lovely buttery aroma. Damm...I must say I was envious of her.

Personally, the butter cake tasted quite nice as it had the right balance of sweetness and butter. It wasn't too dry or too soggy too either but the texture can certainly be improve. As they were warm and fresh from oven, I woofed down quite a number of pieces.

Some of the butter cakes were packed in plastic containers to be tasted by my wife's nieces and nephews whom are our official food taster. They finished the whole lot the next day ......

The final verdict.....Well, if this has been a prize competition between my wife and I, she probably won top prize for her butter cake. Having said this, I must say I deserve the fair play award if such award did exists. After all, I let fate set its own course and prevented any 'divine' intervention!