This was my first time baking a butter cake. The cake turned out looking a little heavier than I’ve wanted it to be, but I was delighted that my friends enjoyed the cake nevertheless. Phew!
Ingredients:
- Unsalted butter: 200g
- Caster sugar: 180g
- Lemon essence: 1 tsp
- Salt: 1/2 tsp
- Egg: 3
- Plain flour: 250g, sifted
- Ground almond: 75g
- Baking powder: 1 tsp
- Frozen apricot: 350g, 250g chopped, 100g sliced
- Icing sugar: to garnish
Method:
- Preheat oven at 180 degrees. Grease loaf pan with oil.
- Whisk butter, sugar, lemon essence and salt in a mixing bowl on medium speed till light and fluffy.
- Add eggs 1 at a time. Whisk on medium speed for about 8-10min.
- Fold flour, almond and baking powder into mixture.
- Fold chopped apricots into mixture. Pour mixture into loaf pan.
- Bake for 1 – 1.5 hrs. Turn out cake bottom side up onto a cooling rack.
- Place sliced apricots onto top of cake. Leave to cool for 1 hr.
- Leave to chill in fridge to let the apricots on top of cake set.
- Sprinkle a little icing sugar on top of cake before serving.
Tricks:
- Replace lemon essence with rum essence or 1 tbsp of real rum for a stronger flavoured butter cake.
- Replace apricots with other types of frozen fruits (e.g. raspberry, blackberry, blueberry or strawberry).
Disclaimers:
- I used double-acting baking powder for this recipe, which was probably a mistake since the excessive raising of the loaf led to undesirable cracks on the cake while baking. So being kiasu is not the key to baking a good butter cake after all.
- I also used canned apricot instead of frozen ones as I couldn’t find the latter at the NTUC. This could have led to the cake looking a little more moist than it should be, due to the syrup from the can.
Serving:
1 loaf (about 10 slices)
