I love vanilla cake over any other type of cake. Love it to the extent that I once asked my sister to get me three loaves of plain vanilla pound cake as my birthday present. A perfect vanilla cake is one that is slightly dense in texture, buttery in taste and has an evenly browned crust.
I’ve made numerous attempts at making the “perfect vanilla cake” in the past which have yielded both failures and successes. However, the one I made last weekend was the best one I’ve ever made. I would like to call this a pound cake but am a little hesitant because real pound cakes are made of butter and this recipe uses oil. Although the cake didn’t taste buttery, it was still moist and perfectly dense. The original recipe called for 1 cup of oil (to 1 cup of flour) which I thought was too much. So I tweaked the recipe a bit by adding only 1/2 cup oil and replacing the other half with buttermilk, hence making it less fattening.
1 cup – plain flour
1 tbsp – cornstarch
1 cup – caster sugar
1/2 tsp – salt
1 tsp – baking powder
4 – eggs
1/2 cup – oil
1 tbsp – pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup – buttermilk
1) Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F.
2) Sift the plain flour, cornstarch, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
3) Break the eggs in a blender along with the oil and vanilla. Blitz for 1 minute.
4) Pour the egg-oil mixture into a bowl and gently fold in the flour mixture alternating with the buttermilk.
5) Pour the batter into a generously greased 7″ baking pan.
6) Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool completely before slicing.
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