Butter Cake

⏲️ Prep time: 10 min 🍳 Cook time: 50 min 🍽️ Servings: 8-10

Ingredients

For steps 1-5:

• 250g unsalted butter (warm to room temperature first)
• 130g caster sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 4 egg yolks
• 200g sifted self-raising flour (use as little as 180g for a moister texture)
• 60mL milk
• (optional) 30g cocoa powder (for a marbled appearance)

For the meringue in step 6:

• 50g caster sugar
• Egg whites separated from the yolks above

Directions

1. Beat butter, sugar, and vanilla extract until incorporated.
2. Beat in egg yolks one at a time.
3. Beat in half of the sifted flour, then the milk. Take care not to overwork the gluten after the flour is added. You may well find that manually stirring in the flour yields better results.
4. Beat or stir in the remainder of the flour until just incorporated.
5. (optional) Separate approximately one-third of the batter and mix in with it cocoa powder.
6. To make the meringue, beat egg whites at high speed while gradually adding sugar until firm peaks form.
7. Fold the meringue into the batter. If you have done the fifth optional step, then you’ll need to portion out approximately one-third of the meringue for the cocoa batter, and the remainder for the normal one.
8. Pour the batter(s) into a cake tin, and tap it on the countertop to get rid of any large air pockets.
9. (optional) For the marbled appearance, run a skewer or chopstick through the batter a few times. Do not overdo this lest you end up with a homogenously light brown cake rather than a yellow cake with dark brown streaks.
10. Bake at 175°C/350°F (conventional non-fan-forced) for 40-60min depending on the resulting batter thickness in your specific cake tin. Just keep an eye on it and you’ll be fine; test its doneness by inserting a skewer and seeing whether it comes out clean.