The Canadian Food Network has monthly challenges for us foodies which I love! This month it is for Anna Olson’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake. You can find the recipe here and information about the challenge here. I made this for my mother-in-law Lorraine for Mother’s Day.
Sadly, once again I had some serious issues with the recipe this month. Before I left to pick up supplies I went through the list of ingredients. In the list it did not specify what kind of sour cream so I just used what I had: light. Turns out at the top of the page there is a comment about not using low fat but I did not notice it until the cake was just about to go in the oven. Why on earth it was not written into the list of ingredients, I will never know.
Here I am adding the sifted dry ingredients. This recipe calls for baking soda and baking powder so I knew this cake was going to rise and rise. In fact, I had read the comments and saw that people had problem with overflow so I put the batter in a tall springform pan:
Ready for the oven but realizing I had screwed up the main ingredient, I hesitated to put it in the oven, now filled with lack of confidence. I looked at the recipe once more and notice in the photograph there is streusel in the middle of the cake. What the? I read the instructions over and over, no, I did not do anything wrong. I carefully followed the directions and am worried that the photo is not for the cake I am making. It also has caramel drizzled across the top, where does that come from?
It is hard to take a risk with a recipe I have never made and share it for a special occasion like Mother’s Day but it is Anna, I trust her baking recipes, yet, this one kind of let me down. It was an OK coffee cake. This was one giant beast of a cake! I prefer her delicate and lovely Applesauce Coffee Cake much, much more. I know my cake probably would have been a lot better had I used full fat sour cream but I do not think it is entirely my fault that I made this mistake and bet I was not the only one who did. Also, the photograph really stole my confidence in what I was doing and stressed me out. As a result, I give this recipe three out of five wooden spoons.
Thankfully Lorraine still enjoyed it and we had a lovely day together!
Your mother-in-law looks so sweet and that she’s enjoying the cake 🙂 I’ve had a few recipes stress me out like this too. I refer to photos too & if it doesn’t match it’s a real disspointment. The cake looks beautiful anyway.
Have you ever tried Anna’s sticky buns? So good!
Looks fantastic Suzie, these types of cakes are usually quite forgiving even if the recipe is not followed to the exact “T”. Yours looks just perfect!
I know what you mean though, having made it as well this weekend I found that the recipe written on the CCC blog was different from that posted in the recipes section. The one on the blog had instructions that made more sense as far as adding the streusal mix in the middle of the cake, so that’s the recipe I went with.
No, I haven’t tried Anna’s sticky buns, I totally should!
Thank you all so much! And Ava, that is what happened then. I went to the printer-friendly version on the site instead of using the blog recipe, good grief!
Well, I was a bit confused at first, until I realized they added in the extra instructions on the blog. I made note of it in the comments section of the CCC that the printer friendly version should be updated as well to reflect the photo of the cake.
wow! that looks soooo delicious!