Buttermilk spice cake

This must definitely rank among the easiest cakes to make, it was so quick and simple - perfect for midweek baking. I put it together whilst making my dinner and managed not to confuse ingredients for cake and dinner! I had bought some buttermilk with the vague intention of making either cake or soda bread with it, but as with many of my vague intentions, nothing had materialised and the use-by date of the buttermilk was rapidly approaching. I remembered seeing this cake on the Caked Crusader's blog and thought it would be ideal to use up my pot of buttermilk. However, I didn't have 350ml of buttermilk, only 284ml and I didn't want a massive cake anyway, so decided to halve the recipe. I also decided that I didn't want such a deep cake and so although a 7" cake tin is not half the volume of an 8" tin, I decided to go with it, but cut down the cooking time accordingly. This worked remarkably well (I'm usually nervous of messing with cake tin sizes and recipe timings but must learn to trust myself more often!) and the resulting cake was moist and light.

Buttermilk spice cake (original recipe on the Caked Crusader's blog)
Ingredients
150g plain flour
112g caster sugar
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
50g unsalted butter, melted
175ml buttermilk
1 egg

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.

- Line a 18cm/7" springform cake tin with baking paper.

- Place all the dry ingredients (i.e. the first seven items on the list) in a bowl and mix.

- To the dry ingredients add the melted butter, buttermilk and eggs and beat until smooth and combined.

- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out cleanly. Mine took 55 minutes.

- Leave to cool, in the tin, on a wire rack until cold enough to handle. Then remove the tin and leave to cool completely.

The cake was really light and moist, but although the spices were nice, I feel that something was missing, I just can't put my finger on it. I think I'd definitely make the cake again, but I might make a vanilla version, rather than a spicy one, or perhaps vanilla and nutmeg. However, this is only my view, my work colleagues were very enthusiastic indeed, and really seemed to enjoy it with good reports.

I worked out the Weighwatchers (UK) points for this (recipe as given above and baked in 7" round tin, cut into 8 pieces - quite generous) as 3.5.