Hand mixer

I bought myself a hand mixer today. My fancy “all in one” food processor, blender, cake mixer, meat mincer gave up the ghost after nearly 22 years of service. Well, actually, only the cake mixer half broke down but I retired the entire unit anyway. I have decided to go with several smaller units this time in the interest of uncluttering my kitchen. I’ll try and get by with this new hand mixer plus the juice extractor and the small blender that I already own. I might get myself a stick blender, but only maybe.

To test drive my new mixer, I made this tried and true butter cake. It’s my mum’s fail proof recipe. I made the chocolate marble cake version.

Butter cake
Ingredients
8 oz pure unsalted butter (at room temperature)
8 oz castor sugar
8 oz self raising flour
4 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180°C (fan forced oven)
Method
1. Using a cake mixer, beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
2. Add in eggs, one at a time. Beat well after adding each egg. Adding eggs too quickly may cause the mixture to curdle and separate.
3. Turn off cake mixer.
4. Sift flour.
5. Add in a quarter of the sifted flour and stir in lightly with a spatula. Repeat until all the flour is added. Do not beat the mixture, only stir in one direction.
6. Pour the cake mixture into a lined loaf tin or heatproof glass loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Check that the cake is ready by inserting a skewer into the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready.

Variations
Marble cake (with picture) Mix 2 tablespoons of good quality coco or chocolate powder with 1 tablespoon of milk. Add 1/3 of the butter cake mixture to the chocolate mix.
Drop ½ of the plain mixture into the cake tin. Then add in the chocolate mixture followed by plain mixture.

Orange butter cake Omit the vanilla essence. Add the zest of 1 orange and the juice of half a lemon to the mixture above. Add a few drops of orange essence if you prefer a stronger aroma.

My word on the hand mixer – I picked the most powerful model after checking 3 shops – a 350W model, thinking that it would be the least likely to suffer a burnout. My verdict? I should have bought the 250W model. It is far too vigorous. Even at the lowest speed, it was stirring like crazy. Probably at speed 5, it would have jerked clean out of my hands and flown out the window. I wonder if I can return it for another model?