Pure Butter Cake

I don’t normally bake pure butter cake, because it’s just really cloying and unhealthy. However, I do appreciate well-baked, high quality butter cakes!

There was a block of salted SCS butter in the fridge, which was expiring in two months, and because it was salted, I could not use it for my usual baking needs. Therefore, the idea of pure butter cake came up!

A quick Googling brought me to foodelicacy’s butter cake recipe. I was impressed by the texture of the cake in the pictures. It looked just like how I like butter cakes to be – soft and moist, with delicate crumbs! I halved her recipe and ended up with an inch thick 8″ by 8″ square butter cake.

Pure Butter Cake – adapted from foodelicacy

155g self-raising flour
228g salted butter, cubed
3 Tbsp condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 egg whites
125g sugar
5 egg yolks, lightly beaten with fork

Preheat oven to 175ºC. Prepare the cake pan.
Sieve the flour.
In a main mixing bowl [paddle attachment], cream the butter with condensed milk until smooth, light and fluffy. Add vanilla and beat till just combined.
In another clean bowl [whisk attachment], whisk the egg whites with gradual addition of sugar until stiff peak. With the whisk on low speed, slowly drizzle in the beaten yolk. Whisk until the mixture is homogenous and stop. Further whisking will deflate the mixture.
Fold in a cup of the egg mixture into the creamed butter. Then fold in half of the egg mixture. Then fold in half of the flour. Fold in the remaining half of egg mixture and then the remaining flour.
Pour batter into pan. Lightly shake the pan so that the batter fills the whole pan evenly. Use a spatula to level the batter.
Bake at 175ºC for 12 minutes, then 160ºC for 33 minutes, then 140ºC for 5 minutes.
Check the cake for doneness. Invert and cool on wire rack, bottom up.

p/s: The original baking instruction was to bake at 175ºC for 10 minutes then 135ºC for 60-75 minutes. I was not sure about this as I felt 135ºC might work for airy cakes e.g. chiffon cakes but it’s probably too low for fat-heavy cakes like butter cakes.

The cake was very slightly overbaked (shrunk a little) as I was experimenting with the baking temperature and time. Notice there were only very few cracks and the dome was slight. I might experiment with lower temperatures next time to see if I can avoid the cracks and the dome.

The skin was the most beautiful skin I have seen on butter cakes.

Beautiful texture. I like the contrast between the cake and the cake skin.

The cake tasted wonderful, not cloying and not too sweet. It was a star on its own. No icing needed, no need to be flavoured either. However, the butter used must be of good quality! SCS, Lurpak, Kerrygold, President etc.