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.
132 Comments
Hi MK…I have few questions the eggs are being used is it large egg or medium eggs? Also if I am going to use cake flour do I need to use baking powder as well?
Hi Aswinih! 🙂
I use large eggs for this recipe – I’ll update the recipe card now 🙂
Yes, use baking powder if using cake flour.
Enjoy!
Hi MK,
Thank you for your recipe. I’ve tried this recipe on two different occasions. Although the flavor is delicious, the outcome of my cake tends to be more dry than I expected. What can I do to get the dryness out?
Hi Kimberly! 🙂
Sorry to hear your cake seems to be turning out a little dry. This could be due to a few reasons, but the most common reasons are overweighing the flour (I would recommend using the gram measurements if you didn’t already for best results) or overbaking the cake. You can try checking the cake a little earlier than the stated cook time incase it’s overbaking 🙂
For more tips, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRy1KuFMdOo
Hope that helps for next time Kimberly 🙂
Can use this recipe to make marble cake? How much coco powder should I add it?
Hi Jennifer! 🙂 I would recommend using my marble cake recipe, which you can find here: https://cakesbymk.com/recipe/fluffy-marble-cake/
If you prefer to have only one layer, you can half the recipe 🙂
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the recipe!
Hi Maryam,
Thank you so much for your Eggless Chocolate cake recipe. It was a big hit Everyone loved it. The texture was soft n moist. It was incredibly delicious. I’m planning to bake this buttercake for my sister, may I know if it is a 1kg cake?. Thanks.
Hi Mélanie! So so happy to hear everyone enjoyed the eggless chocolate cake recipe 😀
Unfortunately I don’t weigh my cakes so I’m really not too sure sorry 🙁
can i add about 100g of vegetable oil for more moistly tasted? as i always found my cake very dry
Hi Vincent! 🙂 You could try that, although this recipe does have a high fat ratio so I would recommend replacing some of the butter with oil (about 1/4 of it), as opposed to adding in additional oil otherwise the cake may be a bit greasy/not rise properly. If you find that your cakes are usually dry, it may be because of too much flour in the batter, or overbaking the cake. I would recommend checking out this video for more tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRy1KuFMdOo
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the butter cake 🙂
Hi MK,
I tried this recipe before and it was delicious! I have an event coming up and I want to do a 12″ cake. How do i multiply the ingredients for a `12″ cake? Should I do 2 1/2. Half the recipe makes a nice tall cake in a 5″ pan. Or is twice the amount enough? Looking forward to your response.
Thanks
Hi Christina! So glad you’re loving the recipe 😀
For a 12 inch cake, if it’s a round tin then I would make 2.5x the recipe, but if it’s a square tin then I would triple the recipe to ensure the cake has good height to it 🙂
Thank you so much! Tripling it is the exact thing I’m doing and I’m so glad I saw your reply in time! Baking it tomorrow night. Will tell you how it turns out once everyone has had it on Sunday!
I did it! Tripled the recipe for a 12″ pan. The verdict? it was delicious and I received wonderful comments but since it’s a big cake the middle parts turned out a different texture. Not under baked thank God but not the fluffy texture as the rest of the cake. Heard that placing a flower nail in the middle of the pan before pouring in the batter should take care of that problem, since the heat gets distributed evenly and I am going to try that next time. Also next time i will have the parchment paper sticking out taller than the pan, more than i did this time. I believe it would helped the cake rise more.
Hi what can I use to replace buttermilk?
Hi Hilda! 🙂 Check out this blog post for a homemade buttermilk substitute: https://cakesbymk.com/recipe/how-to-make-buttermilk/
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the recipe 🙂
May I know what’s the size of a baking tin i should use for a 1x recipe?
Thanks
Hi Elena! 🙂 The tin used for 1x this recipe is an 8×8 inch square cake tin – all the information can be found in the recipe card at the bottom of the blog post 🙂
Hope you enjoy the recipe!
I’ve been wanting to make this for quite some time, and finally realized last night I had all the ingredients to make it, including buttermilk!
I mill my own flour and it’s always a crapshoot on how things are going to turn out when using milled flour versus AP flour.
Last night I used my milled flour and oh my goodness how amazing they were! I used my quick bread pans, cooked it for about 50 minutes and they turned out perfect. Paired them with some homemade whipped cream and some berries, it was so yummy!
I have three loaves left that I will utilize over the next few days. Thank you for an amazing recipe. I will be using it again!
Yay! So so happy to hear you loved the butter cake Kelly and that it worked great with the homemade milled flour too 😀
Really appreciate the wonderful feedback 🙂
This cake was delicious. I used the 1/2 measurement. But I think I over mixed my batter it came out very light and fluffy!
So so happy to hear you loved the recipe! 😀