Cake of Sunday: Simple Butter Cake To Save The Day

You could call it Butter Cake. Or perhaps, in our house today, it could be Grumpy Cake. Three-Year-Old-Tears Cake. Cracking-it-big-time Cake. A day that was barely held together by the occassional incredible feat of horsepower-led ingenuity (below)… (doesn't everyone move incredibly expensive commercial ovens like this? Huh. That was the sound of my heart stopping.)

…and also held together by the triumphant return of the GEESE (but more on that tomorrow), other than those small epochs of fabulous, it was a struggle of a Sunday. Grumpy children, sleep-deprived grown-ups, terribly hot and sticky for October, no Sunday picnic, what was there left to do but save the day with cake?

The salvage was led by Tilly and her friend Katie. They hovered for the cake making, participated in the clean up and wielded the food colouring for the icing. 

It was late afternoon, and as soon as it was sprinkled the girls led the charge to evacuate to a friend's pool, and so we did, even extracting Adam to join us. It was lovely. 

So no one got cake, except me, when I was making early dinner for everyone in their pyjamas (a.k.a throwing leftovers onto the table, eggs into boiling water and grilled cheese into the griller. "If-its": if it's in the fridge you can eat it.) I took one look at that cake on the bench and decided I couldn't go another moment without a mouthful. 

And then, even though it wasn't Friday Night Dessert Night, after boiled eggs and if-its, we all had cake. We licked bright pink butter frosting off our fingers. 

Day saved. 

SIMPLE BUTTER CAKE TO SAVE THE DAY

Ingredients:

125g butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

1 cup milk

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs and beat well. Stir in 1 cup of the flour then half the milk. Then add the other cup of flour and the rest of the milk. Pour into a 20cm round or similar square greased, floured and paper-lined cake tin and bake for 30 minutes on 180 degrees celcius or until springy in the centre and baked through.

Butter cream icing

125g butter, softened

1.5 cups pure icing sugar

Approx 1 tblsp milk

If your icing sugar is hard and lumpy make sure you break these lumps up first if you can – either whizz in a food processor or thump the bag with a rolling pin. Mix together butter and icing sugar, ideally with an electric mixer if you have one. Add in milk while mixing until you get a soft and creamy consistency. Add a few drops of natural food colouring if you like, or a whole capful if you're six and very determined that happiness is bright pink icing on fresh cake. You're right, it is. 

xxx