So easy, so simple, so enjoyable. This cake isn’t fancy – and doesn’t have any embellishments, but boy it is good! Sweet and tender, with a melt in your mouth texture – it is addictive. The crumb top doesn’t hurt (it never does). Matt and Jamie loved this – they devoured it. (In fact Jamie just brought it up again even though I made it about a month ago — maybe he is hinting…) Greg for some reason wasn’t in love – and I don’t really get it. Rob too – but that makes more sense since his allegiance is mostly to chocolate. The author states that you can add frozen berries to the batter and cinnamon to the streusel — and certainly other spices are nice too — but she, like me wanted to let the flavors of butter and sour cream shine. And they do!
Before you start – pull butter, sour cream and eggs to room temp
sour cream crumb cake (from Baking Unplugged by Nicole Rees — love this book!):
cake-
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs at room temp
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream, room temp
streusel-
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
kosher salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9×13 baking pan. In a small bowl, whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
With paddle attachment of mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy – 3 min or so. Add the eggs, one at a time and the vanilla extract. On the lowest speed, mix in the flour mixture and sour cream alternately until just combined, ending with the flour.
Spread the batter into the prepped pan and cover with streusel…to follow:
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, sugar and salt. Using your fingers, work the butter into the flour mixture until it begins to clump. Sprinkle the streusel evenly over batter.
Bake the cake in the center of the oven for 35-40 m or until a skewer or toothpick comes out just clean. Please don’t over bake.
Let cool for 15m and serve warm out of the oven, then of course at room temp.
