Busy Day Cake
This version of Edna Lewis’ Busy Day Cake is such a winner – simple ingredients come together to make the most perfectly tender, lightly sweet cake that can be served plain, with whipped cream and fruit, or with a shower of sifted powdered sugar.
Busy Day Cake or Sweet Bread, adapted from Edna Lewis’ “The Taste of Country Cooking”
From the lady herself: Busy-day cake was never iced, it was always cut into squares and served warm, often with fresh fruit or berries left over from canning. The delicious flavor of fresh-cooked fruit with the plain cake was just to our taste and it was also refreshing with newly churned, chilled buttermilk or cold morning’s milk. (p. 86)
From me: On a busy day, and for a lazy day, leave out the butter, eggs and buttermilk for a few hours or so while you do other things (go for a run, bring cookies to a party, make dinner); it’s surprisingly simple to cream butter and sugar by hand when the butter is soft enough and you won’t have to drag out the mixer. I had lots of strawberries (again!) in the fridge, so I cut them up and folded them into the cake just before baking. I also did indeed have a bit of newly-made jam from another canning project, and so we ate this for dessert on Sunday night with warm strawberry preserves and a cup of tea. I brought the leftovers in today and I can say this cake only improves with age.
Busy Day Cake
Ingredients
- ¼ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 ⅓ cups sugar
- 3 eggs at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ cup whole milk, at room temperature
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375℉. Butter a 9-inch round cake pan and line it with a circle of parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, blend the butter and sugar with a mixer, or by hand, until it is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla.
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
- Add the flour mixture and the milk to the butter mixture in three additions, starting with ½ cup of flour and ⅓ of the milk, and ending with the remaining flour. Stir well after each addition.
- Spoon the batter into the cake pan, and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes before turning it out to cool completely.
Ohhh, good.
I wish you were my neighbor! I like the addition of the berries–YUM!
How much buttermilk to use? This says 1/2 buttermilk– 1/2 cup? Maybe 1 1/2 cups?