Spark of vanilla

Coming back from holidays is hard.  Summer holidays are especially hard.  On this side of the world, the days are getting shorter, the mornings are getting cooler and I’m starting to think about having to sew those name tags on the uniforms for school – not for me, for my big little monster who’s starting school this year. 

It’s all kind of depressing really.

Then, a dim spark of hope lies in the form of VANILLA CAKE!  Okay, maybe I’m being a little over-dramatic but I love VANILLA CAKE!  I especially love VANILLA CAKE with SWISS MERINGUE ICING.  Sorry I’ll stop shouting now.

Sweetapolita is my go-to blog for vanilla cake recipes.  For this cake I used this recipe, which is what I would call a topsy-turvy method of making a cake.  I’m used to creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and then any other liquid and finally gently mixing in the dry ingredients.  This method calls for mixing the butter with the dry ingredients and then mixing the wet ingredients in.  It seemed almost easier than the standard creaming method with amazing results.  Amazing (had to say it twice). 

And the icing, oh the icing.  Not an overly sweet, slightly gritty buttercream but a light and smooth swiss meringue buttercream.  It takes a little longer to put together but the results are absolutely lovely.  It seems so light that you forget that it’s almost pure butter!

And the resulting cake?  Moist, light, a mouthful of vanilla-ey sunshine.  Definitely something to make the shorter days a little longer J

Notes for the cake: I replaced the cake flour by putting 2 tablespoonfuls of cornflour into a cup and then filling it up with ordinary plain flour.  I also only used a pinch of salt instead of the ¾ teaspoon of salt.

Notes for the icing: I halved the quantities in the recipe and still had some leftover.  This was my first time making swiss buttercream and I was a bit vary of using raw egg whites hence I used pasteurised egg white powder instead of fresh egg whites.  The buttercream still came together quite well.

5 giant yums for this recipe J