Baking Cakes is for Fancy People: Buttermilk Layer Cake

A friend had given me a container of cake flour when he moved away from Cleveland, which I have been staring at  for months.

But cakes from scratch are for fancy people. Plus I can't have that much cake in my house by myself. My friend from high school was up visiting this weekend, and since my birthday was last week I figured, why not?

So I consulted my trusty Joy of Cooking.  They had a Buttermilk Layer Cake recipe that sounded interesting.  I'd just gotten a powdered buttermilk mix (yeah yeah, not the same but whatever), so it sounded perfect!

So we got started....

I have never oiled and floured a baking pan.  It's so damn finicky.  But if I'm doing fancy baking, gotta do it the whole way.








Next we measured out the butter and sugar, and gradually combine until fluffy....

The butter was kind of tough to work with...

Just butter .

Butter and sugar. 

                             

But that looks pretty fluffy?

Just a note on unsalted butter. I am really bad at buying the right type of butter for recipes.  And *usually* I can't tell a difference. But once I tried a flourless chocolate cake and used salted butter....and you could absolutely taste the salt.  It wasn't inedible, but it wasn't as good as it would have been without it.  So yeah. Unsalted butter. 

Now to assemble the rest of the ingredients....The instructions said to add the egg first.  

Pay no attention to the rest of my messy kitchen

It started looking a little...weird. Like small lumps? Maybe the egg was too cold still (it was supposed to be room temperature) or the butter was too warm? Welp, can't do too much about that. 

Next the recipe said to alternate adding 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then1/2 the buttermilk, then 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then the rest of the buttermilk, then the rest of the dry. 

Action shot! 

Nice and smooth! We also might have had to switch bowls since the one with the wet ingredients was too small....

The slight lumpiness disappeared and it was very smooth.  I was a little worried that because I was using an immersion blender whisk attachment rather than the a stand mixer on low that it would be over-beaten. It was very much like pancake batter in consistency. 

Next the baking...I started it at 25 minutes as per the recipe for a nine inch cake pan, but it was looking really pale so I gave it another 5 minutes. Still within recipe parameters. 

The final golden brown products! 

Next we let them cool and then took them out of the trays.

FLIP (and hope)!

Pat pat pat....(and hope)

And voila! A little bit stuck on the bottom of the other cake, but just a little bit.

 I particularly like the silicon pans, it's really easy to flex them to help getting the cake out.  BUT it's much more difficult to move them around when full of cake batter or very hot cake.

We didn't do the "proper" thing and slice the top of the cake off to level it out so there were some pretty sizeable gaps around the edges of the cake.  My buddy made a quick chocolate whipped cream for icing.

Not the prettiest but we were already a few glasses of wine in at this point....

And here is the final product! The flavor was very good! I think the buttermilk added...a zing of flavor to it that normal vanilla cake doesn't have.   The texture wasn't as soft as store bought cake (or box mix) but it had that buttery flavor that mixes or store bought just doesn't have.

I do wish I hadn't added that extra five minutes of cook time though.  The cake was a touch overall dry, especially since we only lightly iced it.  The edges were a touch crisp too, but since that's where most of the icing was, that wasn't too bad! And not nearly as hard or fancy as I thought it would be!

Guess I'm fancy now!



Buttermilk Layer Cake:

2 1/3 cup sifted cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk

Leave out a stick and a half of butter and the eggs to allow to come to room temperature.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9x2 inch pans or two 8x2 inch pans.  Alternately, cover the bottoms of the pan with wax paper.  Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl.

Beat the butter alone in a largish bowl until creamy, then add the sugar and continue beating on high until "light and fluffy."  Gradually mix in three large eggs and the vanilla.  Reduce to low speed adn add the flour mixture in 3 parts alternating with the buttermilk in two parts, scraping the side of the bowl as needed. Beat until smooth.  Divide the batter between the two pans and spread evenly.  Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, 25-30 minutes in a 9 pan or 30-35 minutes in an 8 inch pan.

Credit for recipe to the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker, 2006 edition.