Sour Cream Coffee Cake

What makes a recipe, an excellent recipe? In my opinion, an excellent recipe has three characteristics First, the recipe must be for a dish I like. Second, the recipe should not need any edits or additions. Third, it should be reliable – meaning, every time you make it, you can expect the same excellent results. It is awfully difficult to find excellent recipes. Most of the recipes I use, I tweak. Not this one… this Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe is one of the few excellent recipes I have found.

I love baking on dreary rainy days – I think it is because the smell of freshly baked goods and the heat from the oven make me feel warm inside. And since it has been raining a lot lately, I have spent a lot of hours baking. I digress, since I tried this coffee cake at a breakfast gathering at work a few months ago, I have made it at least five times. One of those times, I ate at least one third of it. The last time I made it, my husband warned me “don’t give it away. I want to eat it for breakfast this week.” So yes, it is very good. Every single person who has tried it, has loved it. In fact, I think it is close to impossible to have only one serving. What makes this coffee cake special? It is really moist without being gooey; it is sweet but not overwhelmingly so; it is crowd pleaser; it is easy to make. The “hardest” part is creaming the butter, but if you have a Kitchen Aid mixer, you can do this in one minute.

This recipe comes from Tami Windholz’s grandmother’s kitchen. She told me that you can make it ahead of time, freeze it, and use it when you receive unexpected guests. She also mentioned that you can use chocolate chips, instead of nuts. I haven’t tried the chocolate chips yet, but used fresh peaches, instead of nuts, over the summer and it was a really good combination.

Enough talk about this addictive coffee cake – take your apron out of the drawer and start baking!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar; plus 2 tablespoons for topping
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp. ground cinnamon for topping 

Directions:
1. Grease and flour a bundt cake pan and put it in the freezer. Turn on oven at 350 F.
2. Cream the butter and sugar.
3. Add the eggs, sour cream, vanilla, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
4. Prepare the topping. In a small bowl combine the chopped walnuts, sugar and cinnamon.
5. Add half of the batter to greased pan. Sprinkle topping and add the rest of the batter.
6. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 F.