Berry Summer Cake

Until I began cooking almost every day, I had no idea of failures on the kitchen. I often heard from others about overbeaten frosting, underbaked cake, overdone pancakes...and so many different things, but it had never happened to me until I decided to make this cake. I had a lot of berries, which I needed to use (I tried to eat them all...but it appeared to be pointless))). I found the recipe. It  seemed very easy to make, minimum ingredients - flour, butter, sugar, eggs . With absolute certainty that in an hour I will have a summer cake on my table, I went to the kitchen, turned on the music (as I usually do) and ....Oh, how wrong I was!

According to the recipe I had to beat butter (room temperature) with sugar, then add in eggs and buttermilk, afterwords flour with baking soda. Easy, right? This is the creaming method.

I had all the ingredients at room temperature. I don't have a stand mixer (which definitely makes it easier - I dream about you day and night...), I used hand mixer, but I creamed butter and sugar completely! And I added eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions. But after adding in buttermilk, the batter curded and became greasy! I continued whipping in the hope it would smooth out....NopE! Nothing happened!

I was shocked! Such things don't happen to me! NO!  

Without thinking twice I went to the store, bought all the ingredients. The second attempt had to be successful.  And what do you think? I messed everything up again! What is rather untypical for me is that I wasn't disappointed....at all). But this cake didn't leave me in piece. 

The next morning I new I will  finally bake it. After two failures I reasoned that the problem was in creaming butter with sugar ( stand mixer, where are you? I need you!....Now I know what to ask from Santa for Christmas)).

Considering my old aged hand mixer, which can not properly beat the butter to light and fluffy, I decided to change the method a little bit and instead of soften at room temperature add in melted and cooled butter. But at first I had to beat eggs and sugar together. And it worked! All the ingredients proportions were the same) .

But i still think of the third attempt, according to the initial recipe.)) I wanna cream butter and sugar as it should be.!  And I won't give up until I do it)

Berry Summer Cake

2 large eggs

150 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

100 g butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

80 ml milk

180 g all purpose flour

1 1/2 baking powder

1/4 salt

300 g berries (any you like)

Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F), butter 20-23 cm (9") pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Beat eggs and sugar (stand or hand mixer) until light and fluffy. It will take 3-5 minutes. Beat in vanilla extract. Then fold in butter and milk, mix with a rubber spatula just until incorporated.

 In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. 

Add in gradually flour mixture, mixing until just smooth.

Pour the batter in the pan, arrange berries evenly on top of the batter. 

Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 180 C and bake for a further 20 - 30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool in pan on a wire rack.

Xo Xo