White Velvet Butter Cake

This delicious vanilla cake has a fine, velvety soft crumb, beautiful white appearance and good vanilla flavour; it's one of my favourites.

It’s made with basic ingredients and uses Rose’s 2-step method of mixing: the dry ingredients are beaten with butter and some milk; the remaining milk and the eggs are then added in 3 batches, beating briefly after each addition. The cake uses egg whites only, hence the lovely colour, but as whipping them is not required, whites that have a little yolk in them are okay. The batter is quite thick so chopped nuts, chocolate chips etc can be added and remain suspended while the cake bakes.

I chose to make this cake for my recent wedding anniversary, pairing it with passion fruit curd filling and white chocolate mousseline buttercream. This project was somewhat of an experiment for me and represented a lot of firsts, but I knew that the cake portion would turn out well as this is an extremely reliable recipe as long as you measure ingredients carefully and follow the detailed instructions.