Best Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe
This recipe for the best sour cream coffee cake is a keeper. Our readers love the delightfully moist cake covered in a sweet cinnamon-sugar topping.
By Yankee Magazine|Jun 30 2022|
Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine
Photo Credit : Katherine KeenanMade with tangy sour cream and flavored with cinnamon and walnuts, we think is the best sour cream coffee cake out there. It’s equally good with ice-cold milk or steaming coffee. If you’re out of sour cream, you can substitute a full-fat plain yogurt or crème fraîche. Bake it in an 8-cup tube pan or a standard 8-inch cake pan — it will turn out beautifully either way.
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Yield:
Ingredients
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sour cream
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease an 8-cup tube pan or 8-inch cake pan.
Mix walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon to make topping and set aside.
Stir or sift flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt until dry ingredients are well combined.
Cream the butter with the sugar until the mixture is light, then beat in the eggs and vanilla.
Add the flour mixture in alternate thirds with the sour cream, beating well after each addition.
Spoon half the batter into the pan and sprinkle with half the topping, then add remaining batter and sprinkle on the rest of the topping.
Bake for 40 minutes without opening the oven, then test for doneness (a toothpick should come out clean). Coffee cake may need another 5 to 10 minutes of baking.
Even though I mistakenly used a larger tube pan than the recipe called for, and even though my oven is hot (I baked it for 40 minutes at only 375
I share my good find recipes with relatives. Of course, they ask, who wouldn’t. This was a great tasting cake. Thanks
We make this coffee cake for all of our office parties. Everyone loves it. Just a tip: the batter is supposed to be pretty thick, you have to spread it into the bundt pan.
I have been making this recipe for years, got it from a former neighbor probably 35 years ago. To add more flavor or to make it ‘special’ I sometimes add a can of pie filling apples or blueberries or cherries to the batter. Delicious!
What pan do you use for this recipe? Bundt, 13 x 9, round? Thanks.
Hi Mar. The recipe says to use a 6-cup tube pan. We make it using a 6-cup Bundt pan . It works great! Thanks!
Where has this recipe been all my life?!!! My mouth watered just reading it. I will def make this a house fav!
In reading over this recipe, it’s nearly identical to the one from King Arthur Flour which I’ve made a number of times, always to rave reviews from family and friends!
I have used a similar recipe gotten through a former fellow employee (served at office parties, also!) during the 1980’s. She gave me her hand-written recipe, which I still have and use, it was my husbands’ favorite coffee cake, and I had loads of delicious coffee cake recipes. My recipe doesn’t have walnuts, but they would be wonderful in the coffee cake. The lady that gave me that recipe is Italian and it was passed down in her family, thus being hand-written, when she gave it to me. This really is the best coffee cake ever, I have to agree!!!!!!!!!
Did anyone ever eat at rosealee’s restaurant in marblehead, ma., and have their sour cream coffee cake at brunch? If so, and able to obtain recipee, I would love to have cc of same? Also, did Mrs. ever open a restaurant on the Cape after divorce?
I am going to make this today???? can’t wait to taste it.
This recipe was also on the back of the Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix box and was called “Sock-It-To-Me Cake”. Why I don’t know, but it was and is still a delicious coffee cake and was a big hit all around!
If you use a Bundt cake you could put some topping on the bottom of the pan do that when cake is done and flipped there is topping on top!
We have put some of the topping into the bottom of the bundt pan and it has caused some of the cake to stick too. This is our family holiday cake made for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as other celebration times for decades. We skipped putting topping in the bottom to have the cake appear to be its best. We also have sprinkled a bit of the topping over the cake once it is removed from the pan and on the plate cooling. The moisture from the cooling cake makes it a bit sticky and it adheres to the top, so one option.
If baking in a tube pan, when you turn it over to remove it from the pan all of the crunchy topping is underneath it. Next time I’ll use an 8×8 pan and cut the pieces right side up from the pan like a typical coffee cake.
You can use 2 8×4 loaf pans…swirl a knife in the cake after adding second half to the cinnamon walnut filling. Keep one loaf wrapped tightly.and bring the other to a friend. You can slice and freeze slices to toast with breakfast slather with cream cheese for breakfast treat.
What is the baking time when using 2 8×4 loaf pans?
This recipe is very similar to one I’ve been making for over thirty years. My recipe is from “Homemade Bread” by the Food Editors of Farm Journal 1969! While some of the measurements in the recipe I use are higher than listed here, it also goes into a 9″ tube pan; I use my Bundt pan. This has always been a family favorite, and I continue to bake it when company comes to visit. Thank you NE Today for the wonderful recipes you provide.
Can you substitute plain low fat yogurt for the sour cream?
I often use full fat yoghurt, as we choose not to eat low fat yoghurt. I, on occasion, due to my lack of planning use coffee yoghurt and it turns out with a nice layer of flavor.
Since son has allergies, we have skipped the walnuts and substituted chocolate chips. It turns out great and is always enjoyed.
I’ve been using this recipe for decades; it’s a family favorite. I use 1-3/4 cups of flour for a little more moist cake. After sprinkling the cinnamon/nut mixture on top of the batter, if you swirl it into the batter a bit with a fork it will not all fall off the top of the baked coffee cake when you invert it to cool.
I’m a Marilyn H., also! I’ve been making this recipe for many years and do exactly the same things you describe. It’s always a winner!
I have been making this great coffee cake for a very long time. I more often than not add very thinly sliced pieces of apple to the cake’s interior.
It makes it even more delicious.
Excellent coffee cake recipe!
I bake this for breakfast on Christmas morning, and it has become a tradition in our family.
Nice crisp bacon also goes well as a side dish.
I’m attempting to make this as muffins. We’ll see
Please let us know how to adapt this great recipe for high-altitude mountain areas.
Thanks so much!
I see that you amended the original recipe from using a 6 cup Bundt pan to an 8 cup Bundt pan or 8 inch square pan. I’ve since made the recipe again with the square pan and it worked beautifully. The cake is delicious in any pan and I’ll be making it often!
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I use an Angel Food cake pan in order to take out the cake by lifting the tube out, in addition I make a glaze with maple syrup and confectioners sugar and a little water to drizzle over the top!
I have been making this coffee cake every year since 1963. I add an extra cup of sour cream, makes the coffee cake really moist. Pecans are wonderful as well.
Can’t hardly wait to make this…I think I will really enjoy being a member of the New England Yankee Family!!!
I have three different variations of this recipe! One uses shortening (Crisco or similar) instead of the butter and has a pecan/brown sugar/cinnamon topping; another has 1/2 can of sour cherry pie filling in the middle of the filling, (put 1/2 the batter in the pan, spoon the cherry filling on that, then top with the remaining batter), 1/2 tsp of almond extract in addition to the vanilla, and sliced almonds on top of the cake, baked in a springform pan; and the third has whole-berry cranberry sauce spread similarly to the cherry filling in the previous version. Sometimes I add orange extract to the cranberry version. It doesn’t matter how you embellish this – it’s an excellent coffeecake!
Looking forward to baking this coffee cake! Thank you for the different versions!
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Sounds yummy. Has anyone tried this with all in one gluten free flower from Red Mills?
Do you sift the flour before or after measuring?
Can you use a 13by9 pan?
Excellent! 5 stars. I’ve made 2 in the past week for gifts and just to have for company. It was enjoyed by all!
When you say beat in the Vanilla , sugar and butter . Should the heater be on med. Or high ? Should it be lightly beaten or briskly ?