Good Morning: Sour Cream Coffee Cake

A few weeks ago I attended a family weekend filled with games, walks, and of course, great food.
I know my host loves breakfast sweets and I had some sour cream in my fridge, it was time to make this sour cream coffee cake.  Warning: it is full of butter and sugar and sour cream, yum !!
This coffee cake is rich and dense and freezes beautifully, which is a good thing because it makes a huge bundt cake.


Sour Cream Coffee Cake

1 cup ( 2 sticks) butter at room temperature
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cinnamon Walnut Topping

Stir together all three ingredients in a small bowl.

3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon


1) Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9 inch non-stick tube pan.

2) Make the cinnamon walnut topping and set aside.

3) In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

4) In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the sour cream and baking soda. Don't worry if it foams up, that is normal.

5) (Don't do this yet !!)***The original recipe has you beat the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla all together with an electric mixer.

Which is what I did...

The batter did not get "light and fluffy" as the recipe claimed it would even after more than 5 minutes.

***Instead I would recommend creaming the butter and sugar first for 5 minutes, then adding the eggs and vanilla and beating until that is fluffy.

6) With the mixer on low speed add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream mixture in two additions. Mix until just moistened.

7) Spread a third of the batter into the pan, then sprinkle on a third of the topping. Repeat ending with the topping.

8) Bake for 60 to 70 minutes. Cool in the pan for 30 minutes. Complete cooling on a rack.

I didn't get any photos of this beauty sliced, my bad...
I highly recommend making this coffee cake ahead of time, as I mentioned at the beginning, it freezes beautifully and is delightful toasted for breakfast, brunch or with afternoon tea.

You could also add grated orange zest to the batter or use pecans instead of walnuts.

Coffee cake, Betty Crocker's Best

Genna called me the other day to complain that she could not find my coffee cake recipe on this blog. I realized it had been a while since I have made it. Lately waffles have been the fare on Sunday mornings.
So I dug out old Betty Crocker, the cookbook, of course.

I grew up with this cookbook. I can remember leafing through the pages to admire all the colorful baked goods.

Strangely the book opened to the coffee cake recipe ;-)

I went back to this cookbook after my hippie-whole-wheat-in-everything phase in the 70's.
Don't get me wrong I do love whole flour in many things but it can go too far. I found some very simple basic recipes that I modified to fit my own tastes, mostly baked goods.




Here's my version of the coffee cake.

Laurie & Betty's  Streusel Coffee Cake


Ingredients

The batter:
 3/4 cup sugar
1/4 canola oil*
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

The streusel:
1/2 brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons canola oil*
1/2 cup chopped walnuts of pecans.

* you can use melted butter if you prefer.


1) Preheat the oven to 375 F, grease a 9 inch square or round pan.
2) Mix together in a bowl: sugar, oil, and the egg.

3) Add the milk and stir.

4) Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.

5) Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir together.

6) To make the streusel, mix together in a small bowl: the flour, cinnamon and brown sugar.

7) Add the oil, mix well.

8) Add the nuts and mix again.



9) Into the greased pan, spread a little less than half the batter to cover the bottom of the pan.

10) Sprinkle half the streusel on the batter in the pan.

11) Now carefully spread or drop the rest of the batter to cover that layer.

12) Sprinkle the rest of the streusel on the top.

13) Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes.


 14) Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before cutting, if you can wait that long.