Mama’s Butter Cake

Great plain or covered with berries and cream.

My grandmother on my mother’s side was never a “grandma” but a “mama”. I’m a “gran” to my two grandsons and I better not ever catch them calling me granny or any of those other old sounding names. I’m not old yet. I still have a few recipes in my apron pocket.

Isn’t it wonderful to have all those memories stored up of family favorites. I associate foods with all kinds of events and can recall what we were doing with certain foods. We were in NYC a couple of years ago and had dinner at Gramercy Tavern and were served an amuse bouche that was a homemade tater tot with a tapenade piped into the center and it was served in a tiny dish perched on top of sea salt. So when I see tater tots on a menu, I think of that New York trip and eating one of the best meals we have ever had. But those were not ordinary tater tots we had that night and I have the recipe courtesy of Executive Chef Michael Anthony.I can think of a bucket of mussels and picture sitting outside at this little cafe in Bruge enjoying a delicious lunch. I know I’m strange because thinking of food and recipes takes up a large part of my thoughts.

My “mama” use to make this wonderful one layer butter cake that we would either eat plain or with berries and whipped cream. Sometimes we would just eat it right out of the oven with a pat of butter spread on top . She is still living in her own home but does not know anthing about the whereabouts of that recipe.

This is my attempt to re-create her declicous butter cake to bring back those childhood memories of that cake. I actually let go of some of my raspberries I have been hoarding in my freezer, and with the strawberries and a little sugar, they made a great filling for this cake.

There were two ways of making this cake; separating the eggs and whipping the egg whites and folding into the batter or adding the whole egg. I opted for the whole egg since I decided to make this about an hour before our company came. We only used one layer that night and my husband cut up the other layer into large wedges and froze it. That has been his bedtime snack for the last week.

I do my pans just like my mother and grandmother did, grease, line with a circle of wax paper, grease again and then flour.

Best method to assure the cake will release perfectly from the pan.

These baking strips are great. Wet them, fasten with pin. You will see the results.

Fill and smooth top.

Look how perfectly level the cake turned out. No hump, peak,crack, but a very high beautiful cake.

We got a little carried away with the whipping cream. I was using my ISO whip cream dispenser and it was just so much fun.