Vanilla buttercream cake
When I was little I always thought my mom makes the best cakes. Not because I appreciated her cooking(I didn't) but because her cake frostings tasted less of pure butter than those of others. Small culinary lesson: in 90s Romania most cake frostings were made of 98% butter and most kids hated them(butter in those times used also to be with more fat and with a very strong taste... or maybe it was just margarine, who knows...).
Good thing I didn't know at that time what french pastry cream is because then I would have imagined my mom to be the master of it which turns out would have been a lie.
It seems the inspiration for the cake frostings came from her aunt who lived in Germany and the aunt had the recipe from none other than Dr. Oetker. Yes, Dr. Oetker as in Dr. Oetker vanilla pudding.
Feeling nostalgic for my mom's cakes but wanting to honour the original, I went in search of the cake frosting on the Dr. Oetker website and lo and behold the recipe still did exist after so many years.
So now you know one of our dark culinary family secrets: our best cake frostings are made with Dr. Oetker vanilla pudding(would be nice if at this point I would get some free pudding from them as I mentioned their name like a gazillion times).
This is a festive cake which in my opinion is suited for winter and early spring when there is nothing interesting to make a cake of.
I did not yet decide if this is the best cake batter recipe, as it can get very dry after one, two days. I will try some other ones.
Cake
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened to room temperature (113g)
- ½ cup vegetable oil (120ml)
- 1 1/2 cup sugar 300g
- 4 eggs room temperature preferred
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (or use 1 package of the Dr. Oetker Finesse vanilla aroma which is the best vanilla aroma you can get in town)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour (390g)
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cup buttermilk room temperature preferred (300ml)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 175C and prepare two deep 20 round cake pans by lining the bottoms with parchment paper and lightly greasing the sides. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl using an electric mixer) cream together the butter, oil and sugar until creamy and well-combined.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Stir in vanilla extract.
- In a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Using a spatula and gently hand-mixing, alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture and mixing until just combined after each addition. The batter should be smooth and completely combined, but avoid over-mixing.
- Evenly divide batter into your prepared cake pans, and bake on 175C for 30-35 minutes. When the cake is done, the surface should spring back to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center should come out mostly clean with few moist crumbs (no wet batter).
- Allow cakes to cool in their cake pans for 10-15 minutes before inverting onto cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Frost cake using the vanilla frosting below and decorate with sprinkles (if desired).
Ingredients:
- 1 package vanilla pudding
- 150 g sugar
- 500 ml milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or use 1 package of the Dr. Oetker Finesse vanilla aroma
- 250 g butter (at room temperature)
Method:
- Make the pudding according to instructions on the package using the vanilla pudding, the sugar and the milk(ignore the amount of sugar on the package and put the whole 150 g sugar in it).
- Leave pudding to cool
- In the meantime using a mixer, mix the butter until soft and fluffy(with a hand mixer this takes a lot of time, about 7 minutes of mixing).
- Add the vanilla extract and mix
- Start adding pudding to the butter, one tablespoon at a time and mixing well after each tablespoon of pudding.
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