The recipe below is an edited extract from From Scratch by Fiona Weir Walmsley, published by Hardie Grant Books, rrp $48.
You can see Fiona on Sunday, November 19 at 2023's True Story festival at Coledale Community Hall. The full program for this feast of non-fiction will be revealed on the evening of Saturday, October 7, when festival director Caroline Baum will be in conversation with Tracey Spicer about her new book, Man-Made: How the Bias of the Past is Being Built into the Future. Book tickets here.
This was the very first thing I learnt to cook. Ever.
I think I was eight.
But I also have a memory of a moment in time when this was more than a cake: it was how we held out-of-control days together with small children and a new farm business and building a commercial kitchen, and sometimes Sundays were a struggle.
Here’s a journal entry from October 2013:
Today we made a butter cake. You could call it Butter Cake.
Or perhaps it could be Grumpy Cake. Three-Year-Old- Tears Cake. Cracking-It-Big-Time Cake. Grumpy children, sleep-deprived grown-ups, terribly hot and sticky for October, no Sunday picnic today, what was there left to do but save the day with cake?
The salvage was led by Tilly and her friend Katie.
They hovered for the cake-making, actually participated in the clean-up and controlled the food colouring for the icing: bright pink.
By late afternoon, and as soon as the cake was sprinkled, the girls led the charge to evacuate to a friend’s pool, and so we did, even extracting Adam to join us. It was lovely.
So, no one got cake, except me, when I was making early dinner for everyone in their pyjamas. (Aka throwing leftovers onto the table, eggs into boiling water and grilled cheese into the griller. ‘If-its’: if it’s in the fridge or on the table you can eat it.) I took one look at that cake on the bench and decided I couldn’t go another moment without a mouthful.
And then, even though it wasn’t Tuesday Night Dessert Night, after boiled eggs and if-its, we all had cake. We licked bright pink butter frosting off our fingers. Day saved.
SERVES 8–10
- 125 g (4½ oz/½ cup) butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
- 220 g (8 oz/1 cup) white sugar
- 2 free-range eggs
- 300 g (10½ oz/2 cups) Self-raising Flour (page 25)
- 250 ml (8½ fl oz/1 cup) full-cream (whole) milk
- Buttercream Icing (page 124; optional)
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180°C (360°F).
Prepare a 20 cm (8 in) round or square cake tin by greasing well with butter then lining with baking paper. You can split the cake between two smaller tins and sandwich together with jam and cream.
You can make it in a loaf (bar) or a ring (bundt) tin – whatever you like. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well. Beat in the first cup of flour, followed by half of the milk.
Beat in the second cup of flour, then the rest of the milk.
Scrape the cake batter into your prepared tin and bake immediately for approximately 30 minutes, or until golden and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then carefully remove and cool on a cake rack before icing (if you like).
Discover the True Story of AI with Tracey Spicer at festival program launch
In this curtain raiser for November’s True Story Festival of non-fiction writing, award-winning journalist Tracey Spicer talks to Caroline Baum about the scary and unexpected ethical and everyday implications of AI in our lives. How have age-old prejudices around gender and race been built into robots? What can we do to make algorithms more representative of who we are? An unmissable conversation for anyone who cares about the human race.
Join us as Tracey Spicer speaks about her new book, Man-Made: How the Bias of the Past is Being Built into the Future, and the True Story festival program is revealed. True Story is a partnership between South Coast Writers Centre, The Illawarra Flame, and Life Sentences podcast.
Save the date: Saturday, 7 October, 6-7.30pm at Coledale Community Hall.
Tickets via southcoastwriters.org/upcomingevents
