With my recent trip to malaysia, I've bought several books and "Butter Cake" by Kevin Chai caught my attention. So I've decided to trying out the technique used by him using my own recipe. This concept is very similar to Wendy's Topo Map Cake and I've even noticed the same Topo cake in Kevin's book, but titled differently. Exactly who to credit? One credited her source while the other simply published under a different name.
Have adapted the idea from Kevin's book. Not as I've expected but still happy with the colours. As you can see from the cover page of this book, it supposed to look like scallop pattern. I guessed they might have had the cake was turned upside down for photography. The book had suggested spooning the batter, leaving space in between and dust with cocoa powder before spooning another batch. I've piped the batter instead. Because I was worried that the egg whites might deflate by the time I've finished, I decided to quickly pipe without systematically arranging the colours. This is how it ended up to be.
If you like to play around with this concept, by all means! Do it with a butter cake recipe you are comfortable with. Understand most of you may have loved Mrs Ng Sk's recipe. Give it a try if you'll like to but I've not tried it so I can't comment much. I've used my own Old Fashioned Butter Cake recipe:
250g Chilled butter (cut into small cube size)
130g Castor sugar
8 Medium size egg yolk (65g each with shell)
240g Cake flour (sifted together with double acting baking powder)
1 tsp Double acting baking powder
40ml Milk
1 tsp Vanilla essence
2 tsp Cocoa powder
1 tsp each of desired food colouring
8 medium size egg white
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
60g sugar
Directions
- Preheat oven at 160 C to 170 C. Lightly grease the base of a 8" square or round cake pan and line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper.
- In a stand mixer, cream butter and 130g of sugar until light and fluffy, scraping the side of the bowl occasionally.
- Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla essence.
- Fold in the flour mixture and milk in 2 or 3 batches.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with Cream of tartar until foamy. Gradually add the remainder 60g of sugar and whisk until stiff peak.
- Fold butter mixture into the white eggs until well-blended. Do not over fold or the egg will deflate.
- Divide batter into 3 portion, leaving one portion plain and the other 2 for your desired colour.
- Spoon one colour of the batter into cake pan (leaving space for the other colours). Dust with cocoa powder before spooning the other colours. Repeat for a second layer until batter is completed. Use a palette spatula to level the cake.
- Bake for 45 mins at 170C and lower to 150 C for another 15 mins or until wooden skewer comes out clean after piercing into the middle of the cake.
- Remove cake from oven and let it cool for 5 minutes before inverting (pan still intact) onto a cooling rack.
