Bleh. Funk.
I keep wondering why I don't ever feel as crummy, as bummed, as I used to. It must be the little-known beneficial effects of menopause, or possibly that therapy really does work after all, or just maybe that I've finally grown up beyond letting every little thing send me into a tailspin. Could be. Who knows?
I'm letting you all in on a little secret that, were it to get out in the general public, would completely ruin my long-established and hard-earned reputation. Here it is:
I baked. Not only did I bake today, I baked yesterday. My house smells unbelievably good. I may bake tomorrow, just for the smell of it.
I decided that Thanksgiving this year needed Shirl's Sour Cream Coffee Cake. This was never part of our traditional meal; my mother probably hadn't made it herself since 1964. I'd made a couple of times in recent years, but I came across the recipe recently and decided to give it a go. She made it from time to time when I was little, and I learned to make it then, from her. My mother was an incredibly adequate cook. This in itself was an achievement, since her own mother was really a terrible cook (although she never knew it and somehow thought of herself as the Yiddish Betty Crocker.) And since my other grandmother, Shirl's mother-in-law, was a kitchen magician, I guess it never encouraged Shirl to turn into a gourmet. Anyway, she made dinner every night and it was always fine, if not fancy. And generally, she did not bake.
Except for this. This is the only cake -- or baked good of any kind, really -- that I ever saw her bake from scratch. She did make some other interesting things from time to time; I especially remember the cranberry-orange relish that appeared on holidays and took forever to make, but this was her only cake. It wasn't fancy or even seemed to be that special; certainly not like the Baking Grandma's Chocolate Cake and sweet cakes, which were remarkable themselves. No, Shirl made the Sour Cream Coffee Cake.
It is decadent by today's standards, even though there's not a drop of chocolate anywhere. Shirl was never a chocoholic, and neither am I. But this cake is full of all that stuff, and in quantity, that we know now to be so bad for you -- I'm having a Sleeper flashback here -- and even though I haven't eaten a lot of it yet, I have licked the bowl clean. Twice now, yesterday and today. (I had a pan problem yesterday, so I made more today and tossed the first try.) It's the batter of my childhood. Yes, I ate batter that included raw eggs. Here's my rationale: I ate this same stuff nearly 50 years ago, and lived to tell the tale. It ain't a-gonna kill me now. (If it does, of course, I hope at least everyone gets a good laugh out of it.)
Shirl made this in a 9 x 12 pan, and I wanted two smaller ones, so I used loaf pans yesterday. If you give this a try, don't do that; the bottoms never cooked. So today I used two 8" square pans, and it came out better. I also found that I had to adjust a little as I went along; I don't know if the ingredients are somehow different now, or it just doesn't work as well without Shirl's big 1943 KitchenAid stand mixer. (Helluvan appliance, that was. It even had the grinder attachment that we used for the cranberry relish.)
Anyway, I call this, reasonably enough, Shirl's Sour Cream Coffee Cake, but it should just be called Shirl's Damn Good Sour Cream Coffee Cake. Here you go.
Preheat the oven to about 325. 350 is probably okay, too.
Soften 1/2 pound of butter. Cream together with 1 cup of sugar. Blend as smooth as you can, and then add 3 eggs. Blend until smooth.
Sift together (I don't own a sifter anymore, but those are the directions) 2 and 1/4 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and salt. Maybe 1/4 teaspoon of salt. I just shook some in.
In yet the third bowl, blend about a half pint of sour cream with 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla.
In the meantime, mix together sugar and cinnamon until you have about a half cup of it. Walnuts, broken up into pices, are optional.
Now, alternately add the dry mixture and the sour cream to the egg/sugar/butter mixture. Blend really well. (The KitchenAid comes in handy here.) You want a batter, not a dough, when you're done. You want it to fall from a spoon, heavily, but fall, not a dough. If it's too stiff, add up to another half pint of sour cream, blending as you go, until it's not too stiff.
Grease a pan, either a 9 x 12 or two 8" sqaure. Cover the bottom with a layer of batter, making sure that the whole bottom is covered, but not too thick. Spread it out as evenly as you can. Sprinkle the sugar/cinnamon mixture over the whole thing, and then a layer of walnuts, if you want walnuts. Then carefully cover this with another layer of batter, and then another layer of sugar/cinnamon (and walnuts) over the top.
You will then bake it for about an hour. Check with a toothpick to see if it's done, and bake it for more if it isn't. Today I had to bake the two cakes at 325 for about an hour and twenty minutes. You could probably bake it for less time at 350, but I don't know about these things.
This is basically a butter/sugar/sour cream cake. The top gets all crusty from the sugar; by the way, it rises high while it's baking and then the top falls a bit. It's supposed to do that. (Are all cakes supposed to do that? How the hell would I know?)
Are you still with me? Go have a snack.
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I'm watching Golden Girls
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