Butter Cakes

Aside from contributing an exquisitely delicate flavour to cake layers, butter also enhances a cake’s tenderness, moisture, and keeping qualities. The recipes in this chapter follow a batter-mixing method known as the ‘creaming’ method, named for the technique of beating (creaming) butter and sugar together until soft and light, which is the first step in the recipe. The term ‘creaming’ has pretty much fallen from use because of the ambiguity of the phrase ‘combine the butter and sugar and cream until light’, which sent everyone to the phone to ask how much cream to use. I refer to it as the ‘butter-cake method’. Most butter-cake layers call for a good amount of sugar and use baking powder. Since the baking powder makes the layers rise during baking, I’ve eliminated folding whisked egg whites into the batter. The extra leavening from the egg whites is adequately replaced by beating the batter for a few minutes for smoothness.