Happy Wednesday

I visited my mums place today and spent the day there with my sister Kelly. It's our family home and my family has lived there all my life. We have these two beautiful autumn trees called Liquid Amber (or Liquidambar styraciflua I found out!) out the front of our house. The name fits the tree beautifully as every autumn the leaves turn from bright green, to red, to orange then to yellow and then die before coming back to life again. Our trees are just starting to turn, and I couldn't resist taking a few pictures. 

Since I was visiting, I decided I would bake a treat to have as afternoon tea. Here is what I baked.  

Butter cake with Vanilla Icing Recipe

This butter cake recipe is so simple to make and will give you a moist, and beautiful looking cake.

Cake Ingredients                                                                Difficulty: Easy

- 250 grams butter, softened                                                Cooking time: 1 hour

- 1 cup caster sugar                                                             Servings: 12 

- 2 tsp vanilla essence - 3 eggs

- 2 1/2 cups self-raising flour

- 2/3 cup milk

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease and line an 8cm-deep, 19-20cm based square cake pan with baking paper. (This is the pan I used and gave me the height in the picture below. If you don't have a pan like this, then using a different shaped or sized pan will simply result in a different sized cake so it's no big deal!)

Using an electric mixer, cream your butter, caster sugar and vanilla in a medium bowl on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add your eggs, one at a time, beating them until combined. Add half the flour and combine. Now add half the milk, also beating until combined. Repeat this process with the remaining flour and milk.

Spread your mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow your cake to stand in the pan for 10 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Once the cake is completely cool, prepare the vanilla icing.

Icing Ingredients

- 200 grams butter or margarine, at room temperature

- 1 1/4 cups of icing sugar, sifted

- 1 tsp of vanilla essence or 1 vanilla pods seeds

Icing Method

Using an electric mixer, beat the ingredients together for roughly 4 minutes or until light and perfectly fluffy.

I can happily say my cake didn't last longer than the day! I added a few mixed berries on top of mine to add the perfect amount of fruity tartness. De-lish!

Happy Wednesday everyone,

♥ Katie Lou

KL