How to Make the BEST Butter Cake

Hey , I'm John Connell .

And today I'm preppy kitchen , we're making an old fashioned butter cake .

So let's get started first off , set that oven to 3 25 and we're going to prep our bunt pan .

You can make this in a sheet cake pan totally up to you .

But a bunt is the classic form for this .

I'm brushing the entire surface really well with melted butter and then we're gonna flour it up .

This cake has an amazing butter sauce we're gonna pour in , but you really have have to grease that pan up .

So it does not stick your pans cold .

So the butter will set up really quickly .

It's not gonna pool all the way in the bottom .

Grab a couple of tablespoons of flour and we're just gonna kick this around .

So we get it completely coated .

If you want to save some time , you could use baking spray .

But the trade off is you will not have a beautiful golden finish to the cake .

Baking spray gives you a darker edge when it bakes up .

Ok ?

My pans all buttered up some excess flour in here , but we'll deal with that in a moment .

I'm gonna grab a scale .

A big bowl .

We're gonna whisk those dry ingredients up into my bowl .

I'm adding three cups or 360 g .

Starting with that excess flour .

Now , for the rest of the 360 g , adding too much flour is gonna give you a dense cake that nobody is gonna fall in love with .

So make sure it's exactly correct .

A scale is the best way if you don't have one fluff your flour and Sprinkle it into your measuring cup , three quarters of a cup , three quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder , half a teaspoon of baking soda and one teaspoon of salt and you go and our scales done , just give us a quick whisk .

So a butter cake is supposed to be so rich and buttery and this one is even better because we're making a butter sauce to soak through the cake .

Oh my gosh , it's gonna be amazing .

Set this aside and now we're on to the butter , grab a bowl and your paddle attachment .

You could also make this in a regular bowl with a stand mixer .

You could also make this in a big bowl with a hand mixer .

Some people say butter cake originated when a baker accidentally flipped the script and used inverted measurements for butter and flour .

So it was an extra buttery cake , but there's also different types of butter cake as well .

There's a gooey butter cake which is a little bit different than this .

That's more like a butter pie , in my opinion .

Not a cake .

I have one cup or 226 g of room temperature , soft butter .

I'm gonna clean this up for just a second .

That texture looks really nice .

If your butter is a bit cold , it's just not going to mix well .

So go ahead and pop it into the microwave .

50% power for like 12th bursts .

Make sure you rotate the butter .

Otherwise you'll have the giant pool of melted butter in the middle .

I'm gonna add two cups or 400 g of sugar right into my bowl .

First one , plop it in the second one .

I'll add as the mixer is running .

I think it'll help you get a better fluffier mixture in .

You go mix that in .

I'm increasing the speed .

Now .

I want this to be light and fluffy .

I'm gonna beat some air into this butter .

So go ahead and move to high and we're gonna mix it up for like 3 to 4 minutes while your butter is mixing up .

We're gonna crack four room temperature large eggs into a bowl .

Just have them ready .

Even though I do it , sometimes you shouldn't just crack eggs into your bowl .

You don't want any shells .

Those are not delicious .

Move that mixer down to low and now we're gonna add four eggs in one at a time and you will probably have to scrape your bowl down , maybe medium low , maybe medium if you ever have a cake and it has tons of little pock marks in it or little craters .

It's because you had lumps of butter that were not mixed in .

Well , and when your cake bakes up , those , those lumps of butter just dissolve and leave a void .

If you look at this mixture really rough on the top , the bottom is thick and compacted butter and sugar , you wanna scrape the bowl down .

So you have a nice homogenous mixture and it all comes together smoothly and beautifully with a wonderful crumb .

See hard butter runny very different .

Keep on mixing next egg .

This is actually a recipe .

A friend of mine from Los Angeles requested years ago and I finally got around to developing it and making it just right .

She had a wonderful memory of this cake that had this beautiful butter sauce soaking throughout that just melted in your mouth .

And it was golden and amazing .

It took a while to get that right .

OK .

I've also measured out one cup or 240 mils of whole milk that's set aside and ready to go .

I just wanna show you this mixture because some people get concerned when they see this , it breaks a little bit when the eggs go in .

So you have little Granules of butter that's total fine .

As long as it's even in texture throughout it's doing what you want .

Now , back to our flour mixture while mixing on low , I'm gonna add my flour alternating with the milk in three batches starting and ending with the flour .

Just get that in there and half of the milk about another cup of the flour mixture , more milk or the rest of the milk .

And before I add that last bit in , I'm just scraping the bottom of the bowl , plop the rest of the flour right in there and we're gonna mix this until it's almost combined .

I'll still see streaks of flour in there .

And this recipe is a pure butter cake .

So what we're gonna enjoy is the flavor of the butter and the sugar coming together with the milk .

It's gonna be beautiful , simple and just clear .

If you want , you can add other flavors to it too .

You could add vanilla .

Anything else will work well in this cake , wash those hands all important .

Now come take a look at the bowl .

What we're gonna do is finish it off .

But this is the important part .

I have said this before .

I will say it again .

If you overmix your cake batter , good things don't happen .

So you can see there's streaks of flour , but I stopped the mixer and I'm just gonna fold them in .

I'm folding it because at the bottom there's some streaks of butter of a butter mixture and I just want to even things out .

Get it all mixed up and homogenous while not over activating anything like the gluten in my flour .

This looks great .

It smells amazing .

We can plop this into our prepared pan .

Now , if you see any parts that are a little bit naked , you can add some more butter and um just patch them right up .

This cake is amazing , but I'll tell you you don't want it to stick because we'll have happens is we're gonna make this crazy delicious butter sauce and pour that right into our hot pan , which is the best move ever .

But sometimes great things can be a little bit risky .

This is gonna go into our pan right now and just plop it in carefully .

We want to have like no big air gaps because I wanna see that beautiful shape come through when it comes out of the oven , ribbons of batter coming out of our bowl into the pan just as things should be just use your spatula to work this batter into an even layer .

So it bakes up nice and even we're gonna pop this into the oven 3 25 for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean .

Then we make that amazing butter sauce .

It's been one hour .

My cake looks golden and amazing .

But a skewer will tell me for sure if it's ready .

Oh , nice and clean .

So it is ready .

I'm gonna make this amazing butter syrup now and pour that all over the cake .

It's gonna sit in the bath of it and soak it all up .

It'll be amazing .

But there is a chance that your cake can stick .

So what we're gonna do is grab a plate or a cake stand .

Oh ho ho .

Yeah , I gonna give you a little sneak peek preview and I'll see if it came up fine .

That looks fine , back upside down .

It seems kind of complicated , but I just wanted to like make sure it released before I add the syrup in .

Now I'm setting it aside and we can make our butter syrup for my butter sauce .

I need about five tablespoons or 70 g of unsalted butter .

This is gonna go right into a pan along with a quarter cup of water , three quarters of a cup of sugar and that's right .

My book is available for ordering lots of delicious cake recipes that I'm so excited for you to try along with breakfast brunch and dinner .

1 50 g , three quarters of a cup in you go .

I'm placing this on medium sheet .

I'm gonna stir constantly until it's all melted .

This comes together in about two minutes .

So it's really quick and you can break the butter up a bit if it's ice cold , like mine is , I would categorize this cake as like a delicious Southern style butter cake if you want a gooey butter cake , which is a different thing .

You can let me know in the comments .

They're both delicious .

This one's great though because I love having a beautiful bunt on a cake stand and people just come and take a slice throughout the day .

Have it with your coffee .

Little pick me up .

Disappears right away .

Here we go .

This is looking good .

Right ?

And I have 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla in reserve .

That's optional .

But it's gonna give you a nice finish .

We add it at the end though .

So we're looking for this to become opaque .

I'm not gonna have any of these clear moments and it'll be slightly thickened .

You don't wanna overcook this though because then it's too thick and your cake will stick .

That's opaque .

It's taking it off heat , gonna add in my 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla smell .

That , that's amazing .

This is gonna go right onto my cake for the most delicious bath ever pour that on and you can move it around .

All the cake should get an equal soak .

So you're gonna see butter gooeyness all around the edge right here .

It'll get soaked in and we're gonna let this set in this pan for 15 minutes .

I'll show you what happens next but do not let it sit too long because if it cools down , it'll get sticky and it might stick .

After about 10 minutes .

I jumped the gun a bit , gonna invert this back onto my cake plate , which I know will go flawlessly .

No problems .

Did you hear that ?

It came out ?

Oh , look at this .

That is very nice .

This cake has the most intense melt in your mouth crumb with a gorgeous butter flavor .

Hm .

That is a decadent , delicious , amazing cake .

I really hope you get a chance to make this recipe and if you like my videos , check out my easy cake playlist .