Flour, sugar, eggs, butter: simple cakes to make at home

Flour, sugar, eggs, butter = the ideal quartet for preparing a simple cake

Thanks to flour (of any kind), sugar of any kind, eggs, and butter, we have the ideal base for preparing any cake. Indeed, the pastry is based on these four ingredients, which are often supplemented by milk, yeast, vanilla or cocoa.

The winning associations

You can successfully bake a more than decent cake with simple ingredients. We just need to remember the many possibilities that are within our reach.

Flour + sugar + eggs + butter = pound cake / Breton pucks / cake base / madeleines / muffin base / cookie base (to which you add chocolate if you want to prepare the best chocolate cookies in the world) / brioche base

Flour + sugar + eggs = pancakes / crepes (with milk) / puff pastry (for palm trees) / kouign-amann

Flour + sugar + butter = crumble (with fruit) / chouquettes

For some recipes, other ingredients are necessary such as yeast but can sometimes be transposed.

If I lack milk : we replace it with a little water if it is to soften our dough. Obviously, if it’s to make a flan, we change the recipe! Same, if we don’t have liquid cream or yogurt, we make do with what we have in the cupboards, and if it’s not an essential ingredient, we shamelessly skip it from the preparation.

If I’m short of butter : we use vegetable milk or not; olive, coconut or other oil; oilseed puree; applesauce; yogurt ; or grated zucchini, it works very well.

If I run out of flour : it all depends on the recipe, but you can also use cornstarch; oatmeal, mixed or not; or oilseed powder (almond or hazelnut).

If I’m craving sugar : we replace it with honey; agave syrup; crushed banana or fruit compote.

How to upgrade these basic cakes?

Once we have chosen our cake base, we can spice it up with spices (cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, tonka bean), cocoa powder (marble cake), dark chocolate (brownies, cookies, brookies, and other delicacies in -ies), citrus zest (lemon, orange, clementine), crushed oilseeds (pecan, hazelnuts, almonds, etc.), seeds (flax, poppy, sesame, squash), large pieces of fruits, in fact whatever we want. And if we miss an ingredient, don’t panic, we see if we can replace it, otherwise we forget it.

Come on, everyone get cooking!