This butter cake is made with a combination of oil and butter to keep it nice and moist, yet still bursting with buttery flavour! It’s soft, fluffy and goes perfectly with a hot cup of tea.
How this butter cake is made
I experimented with a few different techniques, but found the traditional creaming method worked well with this recipe! Start with creaming together your butter, sugar and oil until light and fluffy. This is going to help incorporate air into our batter which will give us a lighter and fluffier cake. Then add in your eggs one at a time, allowing them to incorporate into the batter well. Finish off by alternating your remaining wet and dry ingredients on the lowest speed on your mixer until just combined.
What is the shelf life?
This cake can be stored at room temperature in an air tight container for about 3-4 days, and after that should be kept in the fridge. Ensure you wrap the butter cake with foil or glad wrap and then pop it into an air tight container to prevent the cake from drying out in the fridge.
What frosting should I use?
This cake is great on it’s own, but a frosting makes it even better! My personal favourite is Swiss meringue buttercream, but even a simpler no-grit American buttercream will work great!
Classic Butter Cake
Print Pin VideoIMPORTANT: For accuracy, I would recommend using the gram measurements provided, as those are the exact quantities I use. Cup measurements are given as estimates (based on US cup measurements) to make it easier for those who do not have a scale.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (220 g) butter - salted
- 1 cup (220 g) caster sugar - regular white granulated sugar okay too
- 1 tbsp unflavoured vegetable oil - I use canola
- 5 large eggs
- 1¾ cups (220 g) all purpose flour - cake flour okay too
- 3 tsp baking powder
- ½ cup (112 g) buttermilk
- 1½ tsp vanilla essence/extract
Instructions
- All ingredients must be at room temperature before starting 🙂
- Preheat your oven to 150 °C (302°F) with the fan on (see note 1 if you don't have a fan function) and grease and line an 8 inch square cake tin (round okay too).
- Sift your flour and baking powder together in a bowl and mix it together. Set aside.
- Combine your buttermilk and vanilla together in a separate bowl and set aside.
- Cream together your butter, sugar and oil for about 5 minutes until it's light and creamy. If using a stand mixer, use the whisk attachment on a medium high speed.
- Add in your eggs one at a time on a medium speed, mixing well in between each egg. Scrape your bowl down as needed.
- Turn your mixer down to the lowest speed, and add in half of your dry ingredients until it's almost combined. Then add in your buttermilk/vanilla mixture and mix that until it's almost combined. Add in the remaining dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not over mix.
- Pour the batter into your prepared cake tin and then bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool further. You can eat it while it's still warm, or if you're going to frost it, let it completely cool before adding any frostings on top.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information are estimates only as they are automatically calculated by a third party application. Actual values may differ based on brands and types of products used.
118 Comments
I tried your recipe and it is good. I reduced the sugar for less sweet. Thank you for the recipe MK. I wanted yo check is it OK to use powdered sugar for baking cakes.
Hi,
I use this recipe ALL THE TIME, cause my brother loves it, and he’s a picky eater. It’s a five- star review for me. My sister mentioned this site, so I checked it out. It’s totally amazing 🤩🤩
Aww yay! That makes me so so happy Alan 😀 and tell your sister I said thank you so much for spreading the word!! 🙂
Are we supposed to weigh the 5 eggs? If so how much should it be from grams?
Hi Jenney! 🙂
I don’t usually weigh my eggs, but I use large eggs here in NZ which is about 62g per egg (with the shell). Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the recipe!
Hi
Followed the recipe used a wooden stick which came out clean.
After cake cooled, bottom half of cake is very very dense, moist.
What did I do wrong?
Hi Steve! So sorry to hear you had some trouble with the bottom of the cake being very dense. This could be due to under or overmixing the batter, too much liquid/fat in the batter or not enough leavening. I would recommend checking out this video for more tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRy1KuFMdOo
My top tip would be to use a scale for best results (if you didn’t already) as the gram measurements are the exact quantities I use 🙂
Hope that helps for next time!