The Ultimate Butter Cake

Some people eat lots of bread. Some people load up on rice. Yet others just stuff themselves full and hope something sticks. What am I talking about? I’m talking about what food to eat prior to a night of drinking so you won’t get so drunk that you wake up the next morning with your kidneys missing.

But I’ve discovered something that’s 100% resistant to the effects of alcohol and it tastes way better than rice or bread – Amy Scherber’s Simply Delicious Yellow Cake. It is buttery, eggy, moist and fluffy, easily the best butter cake I’ve ever made.

Apart from some leftover rice and steamed egg, this cake was the only thing I ate last Saturday before I went out on the town with 5 of my girlfriends.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate 3 of our birthdays. It was also for us to catch up, now that new jobs/marriage/children have set us on different paths over the past few years.

But seriously, we just wanted to get sloshed.

We wanted to dump our husbands/boyfriends for just one night, and relive the same stupid antics we were up to years ago – you know, the kind of foggy revelry that makes dancing the conga thoroughly fashionable.

And boy did we max out our night. We started off at Overeasy, walked over to One On The Bund, popped by Bellini Grande and revisited our old haunt, Zouk. It was non-stop partying action from 9pm to 3am.

I was expected to be the first to succumb. After all, even in my partying prime 5 years ago, I was a self-proclaimed “cheap date”. I was proud of it too, because I was cost-efficient – just buy me two lychee martinis and I’ll be thinking I’m Beyonce.

And now that two years of abstinence has reduced my alcohol tolerance to almost zero, I was positively a “free date”. I could probably attempt her Single Ladies dance routine on the strength of one whiff of champagne.

So this is what I drank that night:

3 Sex On The Beach shots, 1 sundried tomato and raspberry margerita, 1 Bellini, 2 apple vodka shots, part of a Flaming Lamborghini, 2 Cowboy S*** D*** shots, and 1 Tequila shot.

How drunk was I? Let’s put it this way. I was even more sober than Obama’s bodyguards on Inauguration Day when he and Michelle were walking unshielded down the parade path.

My girlfriends? Oh, they drifted onto a higher realm. They were bear-hugging each other, happily doing the bitch-slap atop the podium in Velvet, and making up a new hybrid dance move that’s part-Vogue and part-Walk Like An Egyptian.

And what was I doing? I was doing what losers always do at parties: I was guarding the bags.

All because I ate a big slice of that cake.

—————————————————————————————

Okay, I could be jumping the gun – I may find another recipe that’s better than this one day. But right now, this is seriously the ultimate butter cake as far as I’m concerned.

Moist, tender and amazingly fluffy, it’s even better than The Perfect Butter Cake I wrote about here.

Both recipes are very similar, but this one has less butter and eggs, more milk, and uses unbleached flour. I haven’t quite figured out how the various proportions, especially the use of unbleached flour, contribute to this stupendous cake. But I’ll write more about it when I find out.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Simply Delicious Yellow Cake (adapted from The Sweeter Side Of Amy’s Bread, by Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree)

210g unbleached flour (you can get Gold Medal brand at Cold Storage in Holland Village)

1/2 Tbs + 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

170g full-cream milk, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

160g unsalted butter, slightly softened

210g castor sugar

130g eggs (about 2-1/2 eggs), at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Line bottom of a 9-inch pan with parchment. Butter and flour the bottom and sides of pan.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, salt together, then whisk with fork for even distribution.

3. In a separate bowl, combine milk and vanilla.

4. Using an electric mixer with paddle attachment, beat butter on medium for about 30 seconds (if you have a KitchenAid,  turn on to power #4). Add sugar slowly and beat on medium-high (KitchenAid #6) for 2-1/2 minutes. Then add eggs slowly and beat on low (KitcheAid #2) until just mixed in. Scrape down the sides occasionally to ensure thorough mixing.

5. Reduce speed to the lowest possible (KitchenAid #1) and add in flour mixture  in three parts, alternating with 2 parts of milk mixture – beginning and ending with flour mixture. Do not overmix. The final batter should be smooth and luxuriously runny, almost like whipped cream.

6. Bake for 1 hour or until the cake is just beginning to shrink away from the sides of the pan.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Note: The cake has the perfect fluffy texture when it is baked in a 9-inch pan, and comes out about 1-1/2 inches tall. If you prefer the cake to be taller, bake it in an 8-inch pan and it will emerge at 2 inches. But be sure to lower the oven temperature to 160 deg C in this case, or the cake will cave in after you take it out due to uneven doneness.