Caraway Seed Cake

Late Thursday before leaving work I was informed that one of the developers will be celebrating his birthday on Friday. It seems that this guy is not the type who celebrates or announces his birthday. Nevertheless I set off to find a quick recipe to make one non pretentious simple cake. I've been doing a lot of chocolate flavored ones lately and while they were always a winner, I thought I'd do something else, maybe something 'intriguing'? :)

The last time I made a Lemon and Caraway Seed Cake a lot of people were not familiar with the taste of caraway. Maybe it's worth re-introducing to see if they remembered, because I think this fragrant and flavorful seed is fabulous and deserves to be known more. 

Caraway Seed Cake

175g soft butter

175g white sugar

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

225g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

Grease a square tin (or a springform tin) and pre-heat oven to 180C.

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. I think it's important to not rush this step. Old style 'wooden spoon' creaming works (i.e. you use a wooden spoon to cream the butter and sugar together until you rub a bit of the mixture in between your fingers and you can't feel any of the sugar anymore)  but if you got your gadgets, it can make this quickers of course!

Add the eggs one at a time, making sure it is well incorporated after every addition. Then add the vanilla extract, caraway seeds and fold in the flour and baking powder. Depending on the conditions the batter might appear too thick (and not a 'dropping consistency') - you can add a bit of water or milk at this stage before pouring into the tin.

Bake for around 45min or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let cool in the tin before serving. Best served with afternoon tea or dunked in milk!

I topped it with a basic frosting of 2/3 cup icing sugar, vanilla extract dissolved in about 2 tblspns of hot water and a tinge of yellow food color to make it a bit more festive. I also sprinkled some colored chocolate bits on top.

Hope the birthday boy had a good one :)