For Christmas this year I had the all-important task of bringing dessert along. It was a given that I was going to be bringing Coconut Creme Pie, but I needed something that was not coconut to bring too. I asked Zander what he would like, since he’s one of the coconut haters, and he asked for a funfetti Christmas cake. Hmm. I can do better than that! I decided I would make a vanilla bundt cake and then add Christmas sprinkles to it to give it a festive look. The only trouble was that I had a ridiculous time trying to find a plain old vanilla bundt cake recipe. After much searching and hunting, I settled on a recipe called Kentucky Butter Cake.
The few recipes I found for Kentucky Butter Cake were similar, but I didn’t find any recipes that had what I considered to be good directions for mixing together the cake. So I made my own directions. A butter cake should be made the same way every time- the butter should be creamed with the sugar, the eggs added one by one, and then the dry ingredients alternated with the liquid. Most of the directions I found simply had you beat everything together for a few minutes- similar to preparing a cake mix. My directions make sense, and make the perfect cake. Since it’s a bundt, it’s slightly dense, but not overly so, and it has a nice sweetness and light vanilla flavor. It would probably make good cupcakes.
What really makes this cake spectacular though is the butter sauce. You can skip it if you’d like, but then you’d definitely need a frosting or icing of some sort. The butter sauce gets poured over the cake when it’s fresh out of the oven, and it soaks in, giving the cake a luscious moistness and an amazing buttery-sweet flavor. This cake was absolutely delicious, and I will definitely be making it again and again. If you want to make it confetti-like, just add two tablespoons of whatever color jimmies your heart desires to the batter just before pouring it into the pan.
Kentucky Butter Cake
2 sticks butter, at room temperature 2 cups white sugar 4 eggs, at room temperature 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup buttermilk Butter Sauce: 3 /4 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter 3 tablespoons water 2 teaspoons vanilla extractDirections:
Preheat oven to 325ºF, and spray a bundt pan with cooking spray. You can use a flour-added spray if you’d like, or dust the sprayed pan lightly with flour to keep the cake from sticking.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy- about 1 minute. Beat in the eggs one at a time until each one is completely combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a small bowl. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the egg/butter mixture and beat well. Add half of the buttermilk and beat that in. Repeat the process, finishing with the last 1/3 of the flour mixture. Scrape down the sides between additions as necessary.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 325ºF for 60-70 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Leaving the hot cake in the pan, poke the cake all over with a wooden skewer or a carving fork. Prepare the butter sauce and slowly pour the sauce over the cake. Let the cake cool before removing from the pan.
To make the butter sauce: Combine the sugar, butter, water and vanilla in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until completely melted and combined, but do not allow it to come to a boil.