A butter cake is a cake in which one of the main ingredients is butter. Butter cakes consist of taking the most basic of ingredients butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and a leavening agent (baking powder or baking soda) and transforming them into a baked good.
These cakes are considered one of the quintessential cakes in American baking.[citation needed] They find their origins in the English pound cake, which traditionally used equal parts of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs to produce a heavy, rich cake.