Julie’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake

  Julie’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Cake:

• 1 cup shortening or butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup sour cream

Topping:

• 5 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup nuts

1- Cream together butter and 2 cups white sugar

2- Beat in eggs, vanilla, and sour cream

3- Slowly add dry ingredients until fully mixed

4- Pour half of batter into large square pan (or 2 8” round pans)

5- Mix brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts, sprinkle half of topping mixture over batter

6- Pour remaining batter into pans

7- Sprinkle remaining topping mixture on top

8- Bake at 350 for 50 minutes

I am back with another recipe from my grandma Sue’s collection. This one given to her by a coworker from her many years working at our local health department. While these beautiful coffee cakes were baking in the oven I did do some digging into who Julie was and found that she unfortunately passed away in 2022. While my heart aches for a family that I did not know, who lost their grandmother too, I do find it incredible that a piece of Julie lives on and I am able to honor her in my own kitchen. 

I obviously don’t know anything about Julie, but I like to imagine her baking this recipe in her kitchen and excitedly sharing a piece with my grandma. Happy to share her recipe, and happy it was enjoyed. My aunt said that my grandma was devastated when Julie passed away. I find comforting knowing Julie was there to welcome my grandma when she passed away last year. 

There were a few coffee cake recipes in my grandmas recipe box. Which, now that I think about it really makes sense for my grandma. She was a lover of coffee and all things biscotti, and when I was younger she used to bake things to bring into church quite frequently. I don’t know why I was drawn to try this one so strongly, but I am happy I got to learn a little about Julie while feeling a little closer to my own grandma. 

As per usual, this wouldn’t be a blog post by me if there wasn’t a mistake somewhere. Thankfully, the mistake for this post was minuscule. I usually try to get a picture of all of the ingredients I use together, and for this recipe I completely forgot to add the topping ingredients into the picture. I didn’t even realize until I had chopped up the pecans and threw away the bag. Julie’s recipe did not specify what kind of nuts to use, but pecans ended up being absolutely incredible in this recipe. So that felt like it really worked out how it was supposed to. 

I started by chopping the pecans into rough, but small pieces. I mixed that with cinnamon and brown sugar and set it aside. Then I creamed together the butter and sugar in my mixer. 

I added in the eggs, vanilla, and sour cream. While that was mixing I measured out my dry ingredients into a separate bowl. Easy, right?

I added the dry ingredients about 1/4 cup at a time and mixed in low speed. When the dry ingredients were fully mixed in, I was left with quite a thick batter ready to pour into pans. I opted to go with two greased and floured 8.5” round pans. I wanted to go with round to be able to share one coffee cake with my parents and the other with my brother and brother in law. This recipe made me realize I only have 8.5” and 9” round pans, so trust that I will be adding 8” pans to my list of kitchen items that this blog has made me feel like I’m missing. (8.5” worked perfectly for this recipe, by the way. I was worried they may be a little on the thinner/flatter side but I think they turned out okay!) 

While I do think this recipe is foolproof (I say that a lot, don’t I?), the batter was pretty thick which made spreading it into the pans a little harder than some other cake recipes I have tried. I divided the batter between both round pans and used my trusty IKEA rubber spatula to spread it around. I made sure to be pushing the batter into the direction I needed it to spread and tried not to pull it back off of any part of the greased pan it was touching. If that even makes sense. In the second picture above, I am holding the spatula level with the pan almost against the edge and using my other hand to slowly turn the pan counterclockwise to get the batter as even as possible. If it’s not perfectly even, that is okay. 

Next came the fun part of sprinkling on the pecan topping and then adding another layer of the batter. 

Spreading the top layer of batter was even more difficult than the first. Because of the topping coat in between, the batter layers were not able to stick to each other. I did my best to keep the same pushing/counterclockwise method. Is it perfect? No. But I truly think that’s okay. Some of the topping mixed in with the top layer of batter, but genuinely didn’t affect the texture of the cake. So keep spreading! 

I added the last of the topping and as you can see in the second picture, I was unable to fully spread the top layer of batter out. I worried that the cake may be misshapen, so I picked the pan up a few times and smacked it down on the counter to see if it would help it level out. I usually do this to help bring any trapped air bubbles to the surface of the cake batter before I bake it, which helps avoid any big air pockets in the cake. But unfortunately, this batter was so thick that smacking it did nothing but send small bits of topping flying around my countertop. I took the chance that this would either result in a slightly lumpy cake, or the butter and sugar  in the cake would melt before it rose and it would mostly level itself out. Thankfully, I think the results showed it leaned more towards the latter. 

I started baking cupcakes when I was still in high school, and while I am by no means and expert or professional, I have enough time under my belt to usually be very confident when cake is done even without a cake tester. Side note: if you don’t have a cake tester, please buy one. They’re so cheap. All this to say, it’s much more difficult to tell when cakes are done that have crumbly topping coats like this. The dark color of the cinnamon and brown sugar always makes me nervous that I will accidentally burn the cake. I kept a close eye on these, checking them every ten minutes for the first 30 minutes, and then moved on to every five minutes. In the last home stretch of time I made myself even more anxious which is how I can so precisely tell you these took exactly 48 minutes to bake. So Julie’s recipe was pretty much spot on for time! I ramble about this, but most of us probably already know that oven times will vary and the type and size of your pan will affect the time too. 

But how did it taste? 

The usual 5 of us tried this recipe. My parents, my brother and brother in law, my husband and myself. And I think I was the only one who didn’t love it! The texture of the cake was that perfect almost-crumbly coffee came texture, and the pecan topping was absolutely to die for. But as for the cake itself, I think I will chalk up my reason for not loving it to the fact that I’ve never had a sour cream coffee cake before. I felt like the cake gave off just a little too much of the sour cream flavor, but I am very curious to know if that is something that could be substituted with buttermilk or cream cheese. 

As for my family, everyone else truly seemed to like this recipe, and I am happy to have it in my arsenal of desserts for the future. I usually ask my family what they think and if they’d eat it again, and everyone said yes. I think it’s easy to see why my grandma would have asked for this recipe and why it was one Julie would have wanted to share.