Food 52

Butter & Scotch's Birthday Cake

The recipe for our birthday cake was born from one of the happiest accidents we’ve had at Butter & Scotch. Hours before the opening party for our friends and family, our baker Lindsey baked a cake for us to serve at the celebration. But when she took the layers out of the oven, they all sank! Without time to bake more, we just lopped off the tops of each cake round and frosted them anyway. It turned out she had inadvertently omitted almost half of the flour that the original recipe called for, and in doing so had created the best vanilla cake we’ve ever tasted. We immediately adjusted the recipe to the “mistake” version and still bake it this way at the shop. It’s basically the dictionary definition of a happy accident! Recipe excerpted with permission from Butter & Scotch by Allison Kave and Keavy Landreth, published by Abrams Books (2016).