Raisin Butter Cake

After numerous attempts of baking butter cakes, I think I have finally managed to get rid of the wet lines that consistently appeared in the cakes. A baker friend said that I probably did not beat the sugar-butter mixture long enough. So, everytime I make butter cake, I will remember to beat them until it is very pale yellow, going to white colours. But after this problem is solved, the egg addition step always caused the batter to curdle. When the batter curdle, the cake will become very firm and hard because all the air bubbles from the eggs have deflated. The steps that I tried that worked for me is that, I will always add the egg yolks first slowly, beating the batter till well combined. After all the egg yolks are in, then I'll slowly add egg whites and beat the batter till well combined. At the first sign of the batter starting to curdle, I will stop adding the egg whites.

Ingredients:

• 275g butter
• 225g castor sugar (this is way toooo much, I reduced it to 180g)
• 4 large eggs (need to change to medium eggs next time, I think a bit too much for 275g butter)
• 1 tbsp milk
• 3/4 tsp vanilla essence 

Sift:

• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine and mix well:

• 50g jumbo raisins, chopped to a smaller chunks
• 50g self-raising flour

Method:

1. Grease the sides and line the base of a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light, creamy and very pale yellow.
3. Beat in egg yolks first until well combined.
4. Add in egg whites slowly and beat until well combined.
5. Fold in sifted dry ingredients and add in milk and essence.
6. Stir in fruits and mix well. Pour cake batter into the greased loaf tin.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180°C for 50 minutes to an hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
8. Leave cake in the tin for 10-15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Should have chopped the jumbo raisin to smaller bits....

This is the right surface skin colour...

Update Feb 2015

I made this again with my kMix using the method of mixing whole eggs. The cake didn't rise too much and it's very short. Or maybe my baking powder has also lost a bit of power ^_^. The kMix managed to cream all the 4 eggs in, past the curdling stage. However I think it is still better need to cream the egg yolks first followed by egg whites. It seems to yield a taller cake. The texture also looked a bit coarse compared to the egg separation method.