The Most Basic of Cakes

Cakes don't have to be fancy or have revolutionary flavour combinations to be delicious, in fact sometimes during a bad day, a slice of the simplest cake can do wonders. To be honest, I haven't had a basic yellow cake with chocolate frosting for a very long time, and for the past few weeks I developed a craving for it that I never gave into because I wanted to try out different recipes.

My aunt celebrated her birthday on the 18th of September, and had invited me over to her place for dinner. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to whip up the old favourite, for an... old... favourite.

*cringe*

I love you, Aunty Lita, I didn't mean it that way, you know I know that you're a beautiful, vibrant, young woman!

The cake was a hit with the birthday girl and all those in attendance, and I have to admit that I'm thinking of going home tonight and making another smaller version just for myself. But that's crazy talk! Who does that?

Certainly not me.

Onward to the recipe, friends:

Basic Butter Cake recipe

• 1 1/2 cups (200g) self-raising flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup (200g) sugar
• 1 1/4 cup (250g) butter
• 4 whole eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 4 tbsp milk

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius
2. Grease and line your pans
3. Cream butter and sugar, add in eggs one at a time and beat until fully combined
4. Incorporate milk and vanilla essence
5. Fold in sifted flour
6. Pour batter into pans, bake for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted pick comes out clean

As for the frosting, I was going to whip up a batch of chocolate buttercream, or even a chocolate ganache... until I saw the Nutella jar sitting on the bread tray. So I slathered the top of one cake with Nutella, planning on using it as a filling and then covering it up with buttercream or ganache...

Until I licked off the spoon that I'd used to apply the filling and decided, "Why the hell not?"

I covered the ENTIRE cake in two layers of Nutella!

Apologies for the crappy picture, I'll simply have to bake it again

Definitely decadently delicious. Who doesn't love Nutella, eh?

x Nabs