Hi Eggy,

It's good to try and fail coz that's when you learn. You'll never learn anything if you are successful all the time so don't be discouraged by a little failure. 8)

Ok, here's the thing. Ovalette (or SP or Quick 75) are emulsifiers that help 2 incompatible substances such as oil and water to form a stable emulsion. It functions at high speed otherwise it wouldn't work. The beating process reduces the egg particles to the same size as the water, resulting in an evenly distributed emulsion. So that's what the Ovalette does. It also helps to give it a longer bench life meaning that you can leave it on the table for about 1/2 hour (b4 baking)without it collasping.

I'm not very sure what went wrong with your cake (apart from the fact that you just concocted it out of the blue hee hee). If you did not beat it enough, it should be very dense, like a kueh. If you beat too much, the gluten may be overdeveloped and thus later collapse. The amount of Ovalette used doesn't sound like it's too much. Or maybe, it requires longer baking time. Perhaps, Yong might be able to shed some light to it. Anyhow, I have a recipe for you for butter cake. I baked a lot of it to give away at my wedding (Chinese custom thing). It was about 3 years ago so I can't remember much about it. All I remember was that it's quite soft and spongy but shrank after cooling. But that may be attributed to a few factors. For instance, my electric beater was not a very good one, my oven heat is top hot etc. You know...one thing I like about baking is that so many factors affect the product (makes it really interesting). Even with the same recipe, the outcome is different under different hands, different oven, different beaters etc. Anyway, try this recipe and let me know how you like it.Soft butter cake using Ovalette

500g soft butter
350g castor sugar
35g Ovalette
40g water
7 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
350g plain flour
40g corn flour

1. Cream soft butter till light colour and put aside for later use.
2. Beat 1 egg with sugar and ovalette, then add in flour, corn flour, water, the rest of the eggs and essence. Beat at high speed for 5 minutes.
3. Add in the dreamed butter and mix well. pour into a 10 inch baking tin.
4. Bake at 150c for about 1 hour.

8)