Opening the latest special issue of Fou de Pâtisserie magazine devoted to vanilla (my favourite ingredient, as you surely know), I felt like trying a very simple recipe for an afternoon snack: the vanilla loaf cake. I chose the recipe by Flavie Millet-Joannon from the blog Il était un gâteau (Flavie actually published a book dedicated to loaf cakes a few months ago, entitled “il était un cake”).
How do you make a loaf cake?
The recipe is very quick to make, very simple and very good. You simply mix the soft butter with the sugar (the recipe uses muscovado sugar but I used brown sugar instead) and the vanilla. Then, you add the eggs one at a time and the dry ingredients. And it’s already done! I told you it was easy.
For the first time, I used the little trick of piping a line of softened butter along the whole length of the loaf cake so that it opens up nicely and gives a perfect dome. Would my loaf cake really have been uglier without it? I don’t know… but it took me 20 seconds to do, so why not…
Which vanilla should I use?
For this vanilla loaf cake recipe, I strongly advise against using liquid vanilla flavouring (besides, it isn’t vanilla, you know!). Use a nice vanilla pod to get all the vanilla aromas and what’s more, you’ll feel the little vanilla seeds crunching between your teeth, honestly it’s incomparable. That’s what I usually do but this time, I wanted to try the vanilla paste from Norohy and it really is a superb product. The vanilla paste is made from vanilla concentrate, exhausted vanilla seeds and powdered vanilla pods.
Ingredients & Method
1 components · Full recipe
Vanilla cake batter
Ingredients
- 120 g (4.2 oz) softened butter (+ a little soft butter for the cake tin)
- 140 g (4.9 oz) muscovado sugar (or light brown sugar)
- 1 vanilla pod
- 4 eggs
- 200 g (7.1 oz) T55 plain flour
- 7 g (0.2 oz) baking powder
- 50 g (1.8 oz) full-fat whipping cream
Method
1
Preheat the oven to 160°C / 325°F.
2
Mix the softened butter with the sugar and the seeds from the vanilla pod.
3
Add the eggs one by one, mixing well each time, then add the sifted flour and baking powder. Mix with a spatula. Finish with the double cream and mix one final time.
4
Pour the batter into a buttered and floured loaf tin.
5
Place a small amount of softened butter in a small freezer bag (to avoid wasting a piping bag) and pipe a line of softened butter along the entire length of the loaf cake, right down the centre. The butter will allow the cake to open up in the middle and develop an even, rounded top.
6
Bake for around 50 minutes. Leave the cake to cool for a few minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack. It keeps for several days at room temperature, well wrapped in cling film.
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