This is the dish we get asked to explain more than any other on the menu, so pastry chef Nisha Prasad finally agreed to write it down properly. Below is our actual working recipe, scaled down for a home kitchen, with the two mistakes she says almost everyone makes the first time.
Why "burnt" butter, on purpose
Browning butter until it's genuinely a shade past golden — verging on burnt, with flecks of dark brown milk solids at the bottom of the pan — sounds like a mistake, but it's the entire point. That extra thirty seconds on the heat turns ordinary butter into something nutty and almost caramelised, and it carries through the whole cake.
Ingredients (makes one 8-inch cake)
200g unsalted butter · 200g caster sugar · 3 large eggs · 200g plain flour · 1½ tsp baking powder · a pinch of salt · 60ml whole milk · 1 tsp vanilla extract, plus flaked sea salt and a simple caramel for serving.
Method
Melt the butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat and keep going well past the point where it looks "done" — you're waiting for the foam to subside and small brown specks to appear on the bottom, with a smell that's distinctly nutty rather than just melted. Pull it off the heat the moment you smell that shift; it goes from perfect to acrid in about fifteen seconds. Pour it into a bowl to cool slightly, scraping in every browned bit from the pan.
Whisk the browned butter with the sugar until combined, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Fold in the flour, baking powder and salt, then loosen the batter with the milk and vanilla. Pour into a greased and lined 8-inch tin and bake at 175°C for 30–35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
The two mistakes people make
First: pulling the butter off too early, before it's actually browned, which just gives you a slightly warm, ordinary cake. Second: pouring the hot browned butter straight into the eggs, which scrambles them. Let it cool for a few minutes first — warm is fine, hot is not.
"If your kitchen doesn't smell slightly like burnt toast for about ten seconds, you probably didn't brown it far enough."
We serve ours with a loose salted caramel and a spoon of crème fraîche to cut the richness. At home, a scoop of good vanilla ice cream does the same job.