Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

Filling:
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Batter:
8 tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
Confectioners' sugar for dusting (optional)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.

Make the filling: in a small bowl, mix together the walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon.

Make the batter: in a mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and creamy using an electric mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the batter in two additions, alternating with the sour cream, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix until the batter is smooth.

Spoon one-third of the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it. Sprinkle the batter with half of the walnut filling. Next, cover the filling with another third of the batter and smooth it. Top with the remaining filling. Spoon the remaining batter on top and smooth it.

Bake until the top of the cake is golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out dry, 40 to 45 minutes. Let the cake cool slightly in the pan. Remove it from the pan by inverting it onto a wire cooling rack. When completely cool, dust with confectioners' sugar.

Personal Note: I never dust with sugar, myself. Yum yum yum. Now that I've finally, after like a decade, figured out how to properly cream butter and sugar, cakes come out better. Sheepish! This is from that Jewish cookbook I mentioned earlier. My aunt and grandma used to make sour cream coffee cakes and kuchen...makes me miss them. And it really is the perfect partner for coffee--as a treaty breakfast it's sublime.

Dutch Baby

Dutch Baby

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
Pinch (1/8 teaspoon or less) salt

Cut butter into a cast iron skillet. Heat the skillet in a 400F oven until it melts. While it's melting, mix the rest of the ingredients until combined. Pull the skillet out of the oven, pour the batter in evenly, and return to the oven. Bake until puffy and browned, about 15 to 20 minutes.

For extra super deliciousness, sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar while still hot and top with some fresh raspberries or blackberries. Strawberries would be good too! Goes great for a sunny lazy Sunday breakfast with fresh squeezed juice.

Personal Note: My parents used to make Yorkshire pudding every Christmas because they always made a huge roast beef, so the drippings were handy, and because my otherwise Spartan and health-conscious maternal grandmother inhaled the stuff. I'd never heard of Dutch Baby until very recently, but now that I have I smile in recognition (it's basically Yorkshire pudding except the fat component isn't beef drippings, it's butter). It's a cute little piece of culinary alchemy--so simple yet never-fail delicious in its transformation. It's a great homage to the power of cast iron.

Here's some photos of someone else's. Oh, here's another; that looks more like my recipe, and the results look more like mine too. And another! And another. I can't help it! It's fun to watch it puff up. :)