Favorite Friday Recipe: Mom's Butter Cake

When I was in kindergarten, we made a class book and each one of us got a page to put our picture on and to write what our future occupation was going to be.  I still have my page and in my rather wobbly 5 year old handwriting, it reads: "When I grow up, I want to be a baker."

While this may not have been the most ambitious of vocations, it is rather obvious given my love for cake and cookies...  But actually my mom had her own baking business while I was growing up and she used to make the loveliest wedding cake tiers to fun and brightly decorated birthday cakes to delicious light-as-air cream puffs for special occasions.  It is no wonder that my starry eyed 5 year old self would want to be a baker as well!

Now years later, I am most certainly not a baker though much effort has been exerted.  I think it all comes down to the fact that baking involves precise measurements, something that I am quite oblivious to.  However, when I found my mom's butter cake recipe, I knew I would have to buckle down, concentrate, follow instructions to the letter and even *gasp* sift flour.

What resulted was a rather nice heavy tea cake that was reminiscent of my mom's.  Although of course, it never is quite as good as hers.

Butter Cake recipe (which I had to google to convert measurements so it's not entirely 100%...oops, sorry mom!)

Ingredients:

• 500 grams butter (4 sticks = 1 lb)
• 80 grams sugar (little less than 1 cup)
• 8 eggs
• 400 grams flour (3.5 cups)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Vary with raisins, bananas, walnuts, etc (soak fruit in orange juice overnight or hot water the day of)

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar together till light and fluffy
2. Add eggs one at a time (use your hand to add in, not machine)
3. Add vanilla
4. Sieve flour and baking powder
5. Fold in flour with egg mixture
6. Leave some flour to flour the add-ins
7. Grease pans (this recipe makes 2 loaves)
8. Bake for 45 min to 1 hour at 350F