Basic Vanilla / Chocolate Cake

Many of my friends were asking me for basic cake recipe to start with. This recipe is easy to prepare and yummy too. You can even convert the vanilla cake to chocolate cake by replacing half of the flour with cocoa powder.

I think this is the first cake I started with in the beginning of my baking experiments. You don’t have to be an expert in cooking to bake cakes. I would say, it is easy to prepare cake than preparing a biryani or chicken curry. You just have to whip up the ingredients and keep it in oven. Within 15 -20 minutes, cake is ready.

I always add or replace ingredients to make different cakes. You can add coffee decoction for coffee cake, or strawberry or pineapple essence to make strawberry or pineapple cake. But I don’t prefer any other essence apart from vanilla as the other essence give artificial flavor to the cakes. Instead you can add pineapple or orange juice or strawberry crush to make yummy cakes.. 

Ingredients

100gms flour

100gms sugar

100gms butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp baking powder

Method

Powder the sugar and keep it aside. Combine flour & baking powder. Beat the butter and sugar till fluffy and creamy. Add eggs one by one and beat till it turns cream in colour. Add vanilla essence. Now add flour little by little and fold in one direction. Don’t mix vigorously or you will end up breaking the air bubbles and the cake will be hard. Grease the baking dish with butter and flour and bake at 180 degree for 15 minute. Insert a tooth pick and check whether it is baked or not. If the tooth pick comes out clean, then the cake is baked, or bake for another 2-3 minutes.

·          The baking time varies in different oven. Some may require 20-25 minutes. My oven is   Samsung and I use microwave + convention option.

·         Don’t be scared or worried about folding the cake. You can just stir the cake lightly.

·         In order to get very soft cake, I usually separate the eggs and add egg whites and yolks separately except when I’m lazy or tired. If you are following this method, then you have to beat the egg whites till you get soft peaks. Make sure that your beater or bowl is dry without any trace of water. You can fold this while adding the flour.