One of my favourite things is cream. I much prefer it to ice cream and to me no pudding is complete with a good dollop of cream on the side. However, I often end up with a half bottle of cream in the fridge. Last week I had a bottle of cream about to expire, which only had a couple of tablespoons (used for ganache) out of it. Cream is still relatively cheap, but I do hate to waste things and so I made butterfly cakes and used the cream to fill the wee cakes.
Butterfly cakes are the type of thing that you used to see in the tea rooms (before we had cafes!). A treat for us in the school holidays was to go into town and have afternoon tea in the tea rooms at H & J Smiths, the department store in Invercargill where I grew up. A cream cake was always my choice and I used to love their butterfly cakes, which were more like sponge drops, piled high with cream and a small square of jelly dotted between the butterfly “wings”. Yum, I would love one of those right now! The ratio of cream to cake was about 3:1 which is just perfect as far as I am concerned!
The recipe for these butterfly cakes came from Ladies, A Plate, my book which has the collection of kiwi classic baking recipes. The cakes are little vanilla cakes (a bit heavier than a sponge cake) and I baked them in cases which are smaller than regular cupcake cases. I topped mine with a wee dollop of raspberry jam and also put some raspberry jam in them before I filled them with cream. My work colleagues enjoyed them for morning tea – not only do they look lovely, they have that perfect hint of nostalgia!
Butterfly Cakes (from Ladies a Plate)
115g butter
115g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
170g flour
1tsp baking powder
2 tbsp warm milk
· Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs, one at a time and vanilla
· Fold in flour and baking powder, and milk if required to give a not too thick consistency (I only used one tbsp milk)
· Spoon into cases and bake at 180c for 12 minutes. I got 15 butterfly cakes from the mixture
When cold, slice off the top of each cake, spoon a little jam into the centres (I used raspberry) and then fill with whipped cream. Cut the tops in two and position on the cream like butterfly wings. Dot about ¼ tsp jam in between the wings
6 comments:
These look delicious Tammy! I can't wait to receive my copy of Ladies a Plate. I'm in Sydney and and it has been on back order for weeks!
These are so cute! I have this book now - can't wait for an opportunity to make something from it.
These look so light and fluffy! They're a favourite for school cookery classes over here in the UK as well!
I also wanted to tell you that I just tried your Kiwi Choc Chip Cookie recipe which I've had bookmarked for ages! I don't think I did it justice but am keen to try again some time...
love Lysy (from Munchkin Mail)
They look so sweet, not to mention delish!
I'm not sure what the US equivalent of your cream is. Our "cream" is like very thick milk. I wonder if yours is clotted cream? or creme fraiche? Anyway, I think it's interesting how we have different names for ingredients.
Cute way to use up the cream :)! The ratio of cake to cream is perfect, the butterflies look like they're soaring on a cloud
These butterfly cakes look so good ,my idea of a real treat.
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