Kentucky Butter Cake

  • Prep Time: 30 mins
  • Total Time: 1 hrs 30 mins
  • Serves: 12,Yield: 1ten inch cake
  • About This Recipe

    “Buttery and moist cake with a nice butter sauce.”

    Ingredients

  • 3cupsunbleached all-purpose flour
  • 2cupswhite sugar
  • 1teaspoonsalt
  • 1teaspoonbaking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoonbaking soda
  • 1cupbuttermilk
  • 1cupbutter
  • 2teaspoonsvanilla extract
  • 4eggs
  • 3/4 cupwhite sugar
  • 1/3 cupbutter
  • 3tablespoonswater
  • 2teaspoonsvanilla extract
  • Directions

  • Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
  • Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan.
  • In a large bowl, mix the flour, 2 cups sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
  • Blend in buttermilk, 1 cup of butter, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and 4 eggs.
  • Beat for 3 minutes at medium speed.
  • Pour batter into prepared pan.
  • Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.
  • Prick holes in the still warm cake.
  • Slowly pour sauce over cake.
  • Let cake cool before removing from pan.
  • To Make Butter Sauce: In a saucepan combine the remaining 3/4 cups sugar, 1/3 cup butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and the water.
  • Cook over medium heat, until fully melted and combined, but do not boil.
  • Reviews

  • “Vanessa,While the recipe says to slowly pour the sauce over the still warm cake it dosent say you have to pour it over all at once. Sinnce the cake will stay warm for quite some time just wait for the first bit you pour to seep in before adding more. Reheat the sauce if it cools to much. Another trick if carefully done is to use the long tined fork that one picks up a roast with. That will make the holes much deeper into the cake and therefore absorb more sauce and much quicker. But press the tines inslowly as they are wider than a dinner fork too and you don’t want to chop up your cake. Hope this helps. :)”

  • “This is an incredibly moist and delicious cake.It was hard not to just sit at the table and pick off bits of the cake until we’d devoured the whole thing.Unfortunately, we can’t make this too often, or we’d have to be rolled out of the house.I love that it doesn’t start with a mix and that we typically have all the ingredients on hand.I used a skinny wood chopstick to poke holes in the cake and the sauce was beautifully distributed throughout.Thank you for this wonderful wonderful recipe!”

  • “WOW!This was just delicious.I poked holes in my cake with a wooden skewer, went all the way to the bottom. It was heavenly.”

  • “The cake was great, but I have one question, when I poked holes in the warm cake and poured the sauce slowly onto the cake, it didn’t seep right through, so some parts were moist while others were not.Can anyone help me out?”

  • “This cake is wonderful.My husband said is definitely a keeper.I also found it very quick and easy.I served it with some fresh peaches that I had frozen from the summer.”

  • “This is a great cake.It’s very moist with a dense but tender crumb.The butter is the star so you definitely want to use a good quality.The recipe is on many websites with varying mixing instructions.Some follow the traditional way of mixing a cake batter by creaming the sugar and butter, adding the eggs, then alternately adding the dry ingredients and buttermilk.I used the directions here and was a bit concerned because the batter wasn’t completely smooth when I poured it into the pan.Cake tested done at 58 mins.Like some others I used a chopstick to poke the holes for the butter sauce, and gradually added the sauce in batches until it was completely absorbed.I added a few tablespoons of Amaretto to the sauce.Would sprinkle coarsely chopped pecans in the bottom of the cake pan before pouring in the batter the next time.”

  • “We loved this cake! The taste and texture was wonderful. I baked the cake in a 9×13 pan for 50 minutes since I didn’t have a bundt cake pan. I poked holes in the cake with a wooden skewer and then poured the glaze over it. I served the final product with some strawberries and whipped cream….mmmmmm…..it was SOOOO good! This cake is wonderful at room temperature and it is also great heated. I couldn’t resist having a warmed piece for breakfast this morning with a cup of coffee. 1Steve: thanks for posting this outstanding recipe!”

  • “I made this cake for my daughters birthday we thought it was just ok I actually made it into a rainbow cake im going to try it again as written with the butter sauce maybe well enjoy it more…”

  • “With all the good reviews, I was expecting more. I did the recipe exactly as it said. I even used a chopstick to poke holes all over. The sauce just didn’t want to seep in though. It was too thick to run down into the holes. I did go slowly with it as said in other reviews. Th parts that were properly moist were good, though. I think next time, I will use part of the sauce on the bottom, take it out of the pan, poke holes in the top with fork and pour the sauce over the whole cake…IF I ever make it again.”

  • “Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivine!!Easy to make scratch cake.It should be served with defibrillator’s (on the side) due to the amount of butter in it, but for that rare and VERY SPECIAL OCCASION this isTHEE cake.I served it with a sweetened cherry sauce, and whipped cream.TOOOO DIE FOR!”

  • “what a wonderful taste this cake has.it reminds me a favorite cake my mother made.my changes…i added 1/2 teaspoon almond extract to both the cake and the butter sauce.next time i will add pecans to the cake batter.my mistakes…i got lazy and didn’t flour the pan, and the cake came out in 2 pieces, so be sure and grease and flour the pan well.also, i didn’t check on the cake until the full baking time of 60 minutes.was a little overdone, probably 50 minutes would have done it.no fault to the recipe, as i know cooking times vary.beautifully flavored cake witha great texture.thanks for the recipe!”

  • “Update Dec 14 ’07 – Made this again and wanted to make a few notes for myself. I halved the recipe this time as well, baked in the same pan but at high altitude (4984 ft). It came out a bit dry. Changes for next time – Reduce baking soda by 1/4 tsp, reduce sugar by 2 tbsp, and bake at 310 for 35-40 min. Tent with foil at about 20 min. Poke holes with nothing smaller than a chopstick or skewer and pour sauce over it slowly.Original comment Oct 11 ’06 – A very tasty butter cake! I made half the recipe and baked it in a smaller bundt pan. The cake was dense and buttery and slightly crisp at the edges. Some parts of the cake were more moistened by the sauce than others and it made this very nice variation in texture. Thanks for a yummy recipe, Steve!”

  • “This was very good!! My daughter ate it for breakfast until it was gone!! I will definitely make this again.”

  • “I have made this cake several times.It is so good and rich.Another plus is you can usually make it with ingredients you have on hand”

  • “My grown children said this was the BEST cake I have ever made!! It was easy to put together, with ingredients you normally have on hand–it turned out of the pan easy and was beautiful!! Since my son wanted CHOCOLATE icing–I put some chocolate chips in the butter sauce. Delicious!!”

  • “I just made this after seeing it recommended as a good way to use up buttermilk.It’s simple and heavenly, and that’s despite my taking a stab at improving it’s caloric profile.I used half as much butter (light type by Land O Lakes) and replaced the extra 1/2 cup with an oatrim / buttermilk slurry. I also used 4 extra large egg whites plus 1 extra large egg yolk, and a couple tablespoons lecithin granules instead of the 4 whole eggs.Finally, I used part Splenda in place of some of the sugar.The vanilla sauce really does provide the perfect finish to this cake.I used a pastry brush rather than pouring, and reserved about 1/4 c to apply to the top of the cake once it was removed from the pan.Can’t wait to try other variations on the sauce, e.g., using honey instead of white sugar and water, or adding an additional extract like coconut, rum, or lemon.Thanks for posting.”

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