Buttermilk cake with chocolate glaze

Buttermilk Cake with chocolate glaze

I love my Southern Cakes cookbook! This is the first time I've made this buttermilk cake recipe. Oooohhh, it's a good one! Basically, it's like yellow cake. Actually the best yellow cake recipe I've made before. Very easy. Basic ingredients and extremely tasty. My changes were few but I DID make some. I added about 3 times the vanilla that the recipe called for. I used half cake flour and I sifted my dry ingredients.

I usually don't keep a fresh carton of buttermilk in my fridge so I often keep the container of dry buttermilk in my cupboard. I read in some cooking magazie (don't remember which one....) that the dry buttermilk powder actually gives just as good if not better flavor than the fresh buttermilk. I clearly remember reading that because ever since I laid eyes on that, I feel good about using the buttermilk powder. The way you substitute in a cake recipe is you add the dry buttermilk to the dry ingredients that you are sifting and you add water to the bowl when you would be adding the actual buttermilk. (It's 1 cup of water with 4 tablespoons of dry buttermilk = 1 cup fresh buttermilk). Sometimes, instead of water, I use the buttermilk powder plus whole milk. In my mind, I imagine that it just creates a richer buttermilk.

Do any of you live in the northwest or Seattle area? Isn't this weather lately just completely gorgeous? I just cannot get enough. It's absolutely breathtaking outside this past week. I'm sure the rains are coming though....and that's fine too.

When you don't use fresh buttermilk that often, this is a wonderful substitute. I also use the vinegar or lemon juice in milk option sometimes.

You just add the powdered buttermilk to all of your other dry ingredients that you are sifting. The water, that you use to mix with the powder, goes into the batter when the fresh buttermilk would be added.

Don't know why but I chose to bake it in a bundt pan. Unusual for me since I hardly ever use my bundt pan, even for normal bundt shaped things like poundcake.

I'm not going to bother posting the recipe for the chocolate glaze since it's very loosely based on a recipe I found on allrecipes.com. It did not turn out as good as I would have liked. Was very gloppy, not smooth and glaze like. But the point is...it tasted wonderful. Like fudge.

Sybil Pressly's Buttermilk Cake
from Southern Cakes
by Nancie McDermott

3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 375
Grease & flour pans

Sift flour, baking powder, salt & baking soda into a medium bowl.

In large bowl combine softened butter & sugar. Beat at high speed, about 6-8 minutes, until very light & fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.

Add about 1/3 flour mixture and then half of buttermilk, beating at low speed just until incorporated. Mix in another 1/3 of the flour, followed by rest of buttermilk and then rest of flour. Stir in vanilla and divide cake batter among pans.

Bake until cakes are golden brown and springs back when lightly touched in center.