Butter Cake

This simple little cake is delicious, easy to pull together and fast. In David Lebovitz’ wonderful book, “The sweet life in Paris”, he said French women always have a nice little cake recipe up their sleeve, which they have committed to memory. I love that idea, so I decided this would be the recipe I would commit to memory. I found it years ago in the LA Times food section, and I don’t know who to credit the recipe to, but I realized it’s a classic Genoise cake, which is very much like the French cookie sized cakes called Madeleines.

There are four key ingredients, but you can add more optional flavors to make it your own. These four ingredients are magic and it’s easy enough to memorize, but more importantly, it’s worth it. My trick to memorize the recipe is this number sequence; 4-3-2-1-1 i.e., 4 ingredients; 3 eggs, 2 sticks butter, 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar. How you engage these ingredients is where the magic begins.