Click below to hear about this cake on the Candidly Kendra Eats podcast:
On Monday I wrote about another way to think about why it’s important to go to church. In that post I talked about a cake. As I was looking for any old cake recipe I happened upon this recipe for Kentucky Butter Cake. With loads of butter…and buttermilk…I started to think that maybe this wasn’t just any old recipe after all. I was practically drooling by the end of the post.
So I made it!
Have you ever had Kentucky Butter Cake?
If you haven’t, imagine for a moment: What do you think Kentucky Butter Cake would taste like?
As a family we analyzed it between mouthfuls:
It tastes like biscuits with honey and butter…
It tastes like cornbread, but cake…
It tastes like coffee cake…
It tastes like butter.
Honestly, whatever you imagined it would taste like was probably exactly right.
Kentucky Butter Cake, from my Best of AllRecipes cookbook is a rich yellow bundt cake, with plenty of butter in the batter, and topped with a butter sauce, made from sugar, butter, vanilla, and water. It comes together ridiculously easily. You don’t even have to get technical with it. Just dump the ingredients, mix well, and bake! (You’re welcome. I know last week’s recipe wore you out.)
And good news, high altitude friends, I made a few simple adjustments and this cake turned out great here at 6,000 ft.
You need to give this one a try!
Kentucky Butter Cake
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 2 cups sugar
- ½ tsp salt (use 1 tsp. if using unsalted butter)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 4 eggs
Butter Sauce
- ¾ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup butter
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 tbsp water
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.
- Add buttermilk, butter, vanilla and eggs. Mix very well.
- Spread batter in a greased 10 inch bundt pan.
- Bake at 325° for 1 hour, until a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Meanwhile, while baking, combine butter sauce ingredients in a small saucepan. Cook and stir until melted, but do not boil.
- Poke holes in the hot cake (still in the pan) with a toothpick or skewer. Slowly pour the butter sauce over the cake and let it soak in.
- Cool the cake for 1 hour. When it is no longer hot, but still warm, run a plastic knife down the edges of the cake and flip the cake onto a large plate or platter.
Notes
High Altitude:
For the batter: Add 2 Tbsp. flour. Decrease the sugar by 2 tbsp. Use 3/4 tsp. baking powder. For the butter sauce: No changes.Notes:
- If the some of the cake sticks to the pan when you try to remove it, replace them as well as you can and dust the top of the cake with powdered sugar to disguise it. I won’t tell.
- Try rum or rum extract instead of vanilla in the sauce.
- To halve the recipe, bake in a loaf pan for 1 hour.
