ITJB Week 9: Sour Cream Coffee Cake (2/4/12 - 2/11/12)

are still baking together for each challenge... and loving it.  This coffee cake had mixed reviews... the house smelled wonderful while baking... smelled like one was baking pie dough! The cake was buttery and very moist. Our Washington state baker and eldest sister said this would be very good to take to a potluck supper... and is the light and delicate, with the buttery goodness that coffee cake should have.  Both of us in Texas also liked the cake and felt it was very buttery and light.  Below are some pictures of our adventure.  Enjoyed baking together again this week.  

This first photo is from Washington. Barb's (gmabaking) Sour Cream Coffee Cake 9 x 13.

This next photo is Helen's (gmabaking2) Sour Cream Coffee cakes... in mini loaves, from Ft. Worth, Texas.

Below are mine, Diane's (gmagmabaking2) Sour Cream Coffee Cake, cut from 9 x 13, from Granbury, TX.

You can see from my crumb shots that the buttery-ness is evident.  These were so tasty that I decided to crumble some of the squares and add a little brown sugar and cinnamon to make them into filling for my cinnamon rolls the next day.

Enjoyed the challenge and looking forward to next week's Black and White Cookies.  See you then.

Urchina

I have also been baking onion rolls repeatedly, even made some without topping to use as a dinner roll! This week's coffee cake was a good change and next week I hope to find out what you expatriate New Yorkers love so much about black and white cookies! Not quite ready to put the onion roll recipe away....

That's probably what I will do. I can't do every recipe, once a week is a little too much, but definitely give this a shot.

Karin

I didn't have the right size pan for this recipe, so I doubled it. That was a good thing because I never did get a crumb shot, since it was gobbled down. Last piece went to the appliance repair man who stopped by to help me avoid spending $$$ for new circuit boards for washer & dryer. I was delighted and he was grinning as he left, cradling the final hunk of cake.

I couldn't believe the amount of butter involved, almost 2 lbs for the double recipe. The smell of whipped butter and sugar is the most delicious perfume to me.

The batter was so fluffy that it was like working with soft putty. Anna had a fun time gently making it even.

It was beautiful but the directions that suggest turning it upside down to remove, also loosened a lot of the streusel. I wonder if I did something wrong because the topping did not stick well to the cake layer.

More pictures and details can be found on my blog   bonnibakesbrooklyn.blogspot.com

Bonni

I lined the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan with parchment and then lightly greased the sides. Oops, I didn't remember the part about taking it out of the pan, inverting it etc. but it didn't seem to matter. Don't have any comparison re sweating but maybe that was avoided by testing for taste while it was still warm, giving the moisture an exit along the cut sides.  I think most of my topping could have withstood flipping but that could be because I didn't use the optional walnuts.

I made half of the amount for 1 round 9" cake pan. I like nuts, so I added the optional walnuts to the streusel. The baking time was shorter than stated in the recipe, so it was good that I checked after 25 minutes to rotate the pan for more even browning (it needed it). The surface looked almost done, so another 10 minutes, and the cake was golden brown and the needle came out clean (total baking time 35 minutes instead of 50).

Having read what others said about a lot of the topping falling down when trying to unmold the pan, I did what I do with bread toppings (if I can't use egg white). I very gently pressed the streusel and nuts on the batter, to make them adhere more. This really did the trick! After about 10 minutes out of the oven I loosened the sides with a icing spatula, put my hand on the top of the cake and inverted the pan. Just one nut fell off.

We had it for tea, still warm, and, after one piece, couldn't resist having just a teeeensy bit more. We love it!

The crumb of my cake looks exactly like Dianes' (gmagmabaking2), therefore I didn't take a photo of it. Due to the use of cake flour, a high percentage of butter and sour cream the crumb (below the streusel surface) looks almost waxy and underbaked (but it is not!).

Karin

This was a complete failure for me.  I have been using the grams columns to do most of my baking for this challenge, and really like weighing ingredients instead of measuring them.   I realized that there was more wrong with this recipe than the errata sheet had listed when I read through the ounces and grams columns.  1 ¾ cups of butter are 15 oz and 427 grams, not 6.6 oz and 190 grams.  The 6.6 and 190 are repeated too many times to be correct.  I tried to estimate the flour with the weight of pastry flour that was listed in another cookbook, but I think I didn’t do it correctly.    Not enough flour and maybe I didn’t bake it long enough.  I baked it for 50 minutes and tested it with a cake tester and it seemed done.  It was nicely browned.  It rose and looked fine when I took it out of the oven, but within 10 minutes it had sunk.  You can see from the photo what the crumb looked like, thick and dense.   For those who had success, I assume you followed the volume column.

Carlene

Sorry to see the plight of all those ingredients, especially because your crust and topping look so tasty. As you can see in my sister Diane's photo, the crumb did look wet and unfinished but it was in fact light and very soft.

Wish I had checked weight against my volume measurements for this recipe and maybe I could have helped here. I've been doing that for a while in my efforts to change to using weight rather than volume but when I'm in a hurry I revert to what is most familiar.

I prefer to weigh ingredients but I've noticed too many errors in several recipes so far, so I'm forced to use the volumn column.

Bonni

I'm sorry to hear about these problems with the ingredients, that Carlene and others had.

If the cake appears done, but caves in when cooling, your oven temperature might be too hot,  so that the crust is brown, before the crumb is really done.

I used the grams exactly as in the recipe, with the errata correction for the baking soda (2 g) and the sour cream (285 g), halved for just one round cake. The cake turned out just fine. The crumb under the streusel surface looked kind of underbaked, but obviously wasn't, and the taste was excellent.

My guess is that this crumb consistency has something to do with the superfine, low protein flour and the large amount of sour cream and butter. Baking a round, low coffee cake instead of a higher cake in loaf pan might have made baking a bit easier.

Because in principle I do not like the idea of a totally white dough, next time I will substitute some whole wheat pastry for part of the cake flour.

Karin

Having read everyone's comments, I did half the recipe like Karin, only mine was not a success.  It was really quite stodgy, although it did taste OK.  My husband ate it up - he likes these challenges ! 

Nici