Scrambled Eggs, Cheese, and Avocado Tortilla Bowl Recipe
September 16, 2025
Butter Cake (sponge cake) Recipe
An distinctive, but easy Vanilla Butter Cake. Tailored from a grasp Cook dinner’s Illustrated recipe, this sponge cake is made with pantry staples, has a velvety, tender crumb and retains properly for 3 days. A necessary addition to each recipe assortment!
Need to step it up? Attempt my final Excellent Vanilla Cake.
Moist and tender Vanilla Sponge Cake
I name this a plain-jane Vanilla Sponge Cake, however it’s actually something however that. Everybody ought to have a basic vanilla sponge cake of their repertoire, and it took me a few years to search out the “good” one.
This can be a basic, easy Vanilla Sponge Cake that’s made with primary components – eggs, milk, butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and salt. That’s it. No bitter cream, no buttermilk – these will not be pantry staples in my world – or another schmancy components. Sure including bitter cream and/or buttermilk makes an much more tender, extra moist cake. However I wished to share a very nice Vanilla Sponge Cake that’s made with simply pantry staples.
I’ve a mushy spot for quaint Vanilla sponge muffins. I’m fairly certain the Girls’s Weekly Greatest Ever Sponge was the primary cake I ever (tried?) to make. 🙂 Freshly made, they’re beautiful, albeit a wee bit dry for my style. However the greatest difficulty I’ve all the time had is that after 12 hours, the sponge is extremely dry. Even slathered with copious quantities of cream and frosting can’t cover it.
This recipe I’m sharing right this moment is made with the identical components as quaint Vanilla Sponge Truffles, however there’s one essential step that you simply gained’t see in any Girls’s Weekly recipe books from the 1980’s: beating softened butter into the dry components. THIS is the key to a moist, tender sponge cake made with out bitter cream or buttermilk.
How do I do know this?
As a result of it is a Cook dinner’s Illustrated recipe. 🙂 They’ve gone and carried out all of the laborious work with the recipe testing for us.
Common readers know I’m by no means going to win any awards within the cake adorning class. I’m far more focussed on the physique of the cake – getting that sponge proper. So I stored this straightforward and simply slathered on plenty of cream and and sandwiched it with strawberries. Along with including some beautiful recent juicy flavours into the cake, the strawberries additionally cease the cream from oozing out of the cake while you minimize into it.
Glad weekend everybody! Hope you will have a stunning one. I’m off to a pageant of some type – for a buddies’ birthday. I’m probably not a festival-type gal, so will probably be an expertise. I don’t even know what the pageant is for – music, I’m guessing. Guess I ought to most likely go away my stilettos behind. 😉 – Johnsat x
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
Ingredients
- 225 g / 2 sticks unsalted butter , cut into 8 pieces and softened
- 4 large eggs (55 – 65g / 2 – 2.5 oz each), at room temperature
- 1/2 cup / 125 ml milk (whole or low fat, not no fat), room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 3/4 cups / 265g plain flour (all purpose flour, 7 oz) (Note 1)
- 1/4 cup cornflour / cornstarch (Note 1)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 1/2 cups / 330g caster sugar / superfine sugar (normal white sugar also ok)
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 cups / 625 ml whipping cream
- 2 tbsp white sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 400 g/ 14 oz strawberries , halved (1 1/2 punnets)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C/350F (standard) or 160C/320F (fan / convection). Put the rack in the middle of the oven.
- Butter 2 x 20cm / 8″ cake pans (Note 2). Line the base with baking paper.
- Place Wet ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine.
- Place Dry ingredients in a bowl and use a handheld beater on speed 1 (slowest) to quickly whisk.
- Add 1/3 of the butter, then put the beater whisk in the butter, and mix using speed 1. Once the butter is incorporated a bit, speed up to 5 and whisk for 10 seconds.
- Add another 1/3 of the butter then repeat, then add remaining butter and repeat again. It should look like wet sand (see video / photos in post).
- Add half the Wet mixture, beat until incorporated. Add remaining Wet mixture, then beat on speed 5 (medium) until almost completely smooth.
- Divide between cake pans, smooth surface (it levels out in the oven), then bake for 25 minutes.
- A skewer inserted into the middle should come out clean but moist.
- Cool on cooling rack for at least 15 minutes then remove cake from pan.
- Optional: Use a serrated knife (I use a bread knife) to cut the top off each cake to make it completely flat. This makes neat layers when you cut into the cake.
- Place cream, vanilla and sugar in a bowl. Beat on high with a handheld beater or stand mixer until firm peaks form.
- If piping little swirls around the edge like in the photos, transfer 1 cup of cream into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
- Place a cake on a serving platter. Spread a thin layer of cream over the top.
- Cover with strawberries, cut side down.
- Top with 1/3 of the cream.
- Place 2nd cake on top. Cover top and sides with remaining cream. Pipe cream around the edge.
- Decorate with remaining strawberries, as desired.
Notes
1. The original recipe calls for 2 cups cake flour. I use a combination of plain flour and cornflour which is a substitute for cake flour because this recipe is my basic vanilla sponge cake recipe and I want to make it using pantry staples. Cake flour is not a staple in my pantry. Cake flour or cornflour + plain flour makes the crumb of cakes more tender and almost “velvety” than just using plain flour.
2. CAKE PAN SIZE: The original Cook’s Illustrated recipe says to make this in 3 x 20cm/8″ pans or 2 x 23cm/9″ pans. If you level off the cake surface, as I do in the video, so each layer is neat and flat, then I think 2 x 20cm/8″ pans is better, otherwise the layers get too thin. However, if you do not plan to cut the top of the cake to make the surface flat, then you can use 3 x 20cm/8″ pans or 2 x 23cm/9″ pans.
3. Recipe SOURCE: This is adapted from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. The original recipe is made with just cake flour (see note 1). The butter is chopped into 16 pieces and added in 1 piece at a time. I find it easier to do it in 3 batches and didn’t notice a difference in outcome. Also see Note 2 regarding cake pan size.
4. Cream: I know it sounds like alot, but if you want to have cream in the middle, top and sides as well as some to pipe for decoration, you really need this much! If you don’t do the piped decorations on top, you can reduce the cream by 1/2 cup / 125ml.
5. STANDMIXER: Even on the lowest speed, there will be some “flour dust” so you will either need to use a guard to stop the flour flying up everywhere or do as per the original recipe and chop the butter into 16 small pieces and add them one at a time, beating for around 1 minute on low speed, increasing to high until it looks like what you see in the video.
6. Different COUNTRIES: Measuring cups and spoons varies slightly between America and most of the rest of the world (e.g. Aus/ NZ/Europe). For most recipes, the difference is not enough to affect the recipe, but for baking recipes, it can be the difference between success and fail. This recipe has been tested using both US and “rest of world” measures so just follow the ingredient weights. Only exception is Japan – please use weights, not cups.
7. STORING: This cake keeps well in an airtight container for 3 days without the sponge going dry. If decorated with cream, store in the fridge if the temperature is > 20C / 70F. bring to room temperature before serving.
8. Nutrition is for the cake only, excluding cream for 12 servings. Including the cream, it is 403 calories per serving with 33g fat.
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