Sour Cream Coffee Cake

My apologies for the delay on posting this. I actually made it way back in April, but it was so delicious that it took me a whole month to stop licking my fingers and get on with posting. Either that or I got distracted by work. We'll go with the second one.

My good friend Nikka shared this recipe, and she says it's from a cookbook called 'A Taste of Oregon'.  I would have assumed Oregon would taste vaguely like oregano, but it turns out that it tastes like a cake that is so rich and delicious that it actually hurts your heart a little bit.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter softened
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

Topping (consider doubling this)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional but recommended)

1. Preheat oven to 350F/170C.
2. In a large bowl cream the butter, sugar and eggs.
3. Stir or mix in sour cream, vanilla, flour, salt and baking powder until well combined.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the topping ingredients.
5. Pour half the batter into a greased dish (9" cake pan, bundt pan or tube pan).
6. Cover with half the topping (can split into thirds or etc for more 'ribbons' of flavour if you've doubled the topping).
7. Add remaining batter and top with remaining topping.
8. Bake for 1 hour, covering with foil in last 15-20 minutes to keep top from overcooking. The sugar will get too brown if you skip this step.

I do believe this would be best made in a bundt pan, but I don't own one, so instead I simply used a round cake pan, which resulted in a deliciously gooey and slightly undercooked centre. I *REALLY* like the gooey centre part, but if you're not partial to delicious and undercooked batter, you should seriously consider going with the bundt pan.

I am going to tell that this cake honest to goodness brought tears to my eyes. It was a near religious experience for me. This cake could end wars.

In other news - I haven't given up in the kitchen, things have just been rather dull.  I've got a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies that are begging to be blogged about though, but aside from that I've just been revisiting variations on chicken since we bought so much at Costco.