Basic Is Good

I was in a baking kind of mood today. Actually I was feeling strangely domestic - I got most of the house cleaned, three loads of washing done, two baskets of ironing finished and managed to bake bread, make a cake and organise a decent dinner too! Hmmm, can you tell I was avoiding work? LOL.

I was wanting cake but I didn't want anything too sweet. I didn't want chocolate ("WHAT???" they all gasp, simultaneously shocked, amazed and horrified.) because I wanted Offspring #2 to be able to have some cake too and I'm just not willing to feed chocolate cake to an 18month old. I also didn't want anything too fiddly. My brain is struggling enough at the moment, we sure don't need any added pressure on it. It would probably explode. I finally settled on a Basic Buttercake recipe but jazzed it up a little with some passionfruit icing. It ended up being exactly what I was after - simple, sweet but not cloying, and suitable for all members of the family. Yes, I did cut the icing off #2's slice - I may have mellowed between kids but not that much!

Basic Butter Cake
from The Australian Women's Weekly Cakes and Slices



125g butter
1 teaspooon vanilla essence
¾ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1½ cups self-raising flour
½ cup milk

Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease a 20cm ring pan and line the bottom.
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat until combined.
Stir in half the sifted flour and half the milk, then stir in the remaining flour and milk.
Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes.

Passionfruit Icing
Sift 1 cup of icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in 1 teaspoon butter and enough passionfruit pulp to mix to a spreadable paste. (I used tinned passionfruit pulp and used about 4 teaspoons to get the icing to the ‘drippy-ness’ that I wanted)