Dorie’s vanilla cake

The thing that attracted me to this recipe was Dorie’s description of a perfect tightly knot crumb reminiscent of Sara Lee’s. The result was more like a butter cake than Sara Lee’s pound cake. This is not a light and feathery cake, but a serious butter cake that had weight. And like all butter cakes, it tasted a whole lot better the day after. It is a delicious cake, buttery and really good sliced with some yummy runny apricot jam that I had gotten as a gift from Yati from Morocco. I made the recipe in 4 small loaf pans. The cakes developed their characterisitic crack on top without any help from me. Apparently you can encourage the formation of this crack by running a butter knife across the top of the cakes after 5 mins of baking. A loaf was eaten for tea, another was sliced and wrapped into my mom’s lunchbox to be shared with the teachers in her school and another 2 were tightly wrapped and put in an airtight container in the freezer for the in laws. The cake can be stored in an airtight container (so it doesn’t absorb smells from your fridge) for up to 2 months. The original recipe had rum in it which I omitted.

ovenhaven asked about my serving plate in this post, I got the plate as a gift form Australia but had recently purchased an identical butter dish (seen in the background of the picture) with a pair of sugar and tea jars from Recaptured at Enterprise One. I have been avidly furniture shopping lately, and this place is a gem.. I love everything in it. I tried to look for a site, but I don’t think they exist online. I am eyeing a sofa in particular. Unfortunately, they only hold their one of a kind pieces for up to 3 months at their warehouse. And our apartment will only be ready at the end of the year.

Vanilla cake

Adapted from Dorie’s “Baking from My Home to Yours”

Ingredients

2 cups sugar (original recipe has 2 1/3)

6 eggs at room temperature

200g butter, melted and cooled

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 vanilla beans pulped

2/3 cup heavy cream (I used Bulla Pure Cream)

Method

Rub vanilla pulp and pods into sugar in a bowl till fragrant. Remove pods and store in your sugar jar for vanilla sugar to be used in future. Put sugar in a mixer and beat eggs in one at a time, giving at least 1 min for each egg to be incorporated. Beat till batter smooth and thick. Add in cream and whip for 1 min. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in separate bowl. Fold into batter in 2 or 3 additions with a gentle hand. Fold in melted butter. Flour and dust cake pans (mine were small, about 15X6 cm, I managed to fill 4 tins) fill about 3/4 way thru. Bake in oven at 170C for 35-40 mins. Leave to cool and invert onto cooling racks then turn it right side up and leave to cool completely.

I’ve noticed that after wordpress upgraded, my photos are looking rather grainy and low resolutioned. I wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same problem. Will appreciate any tips.