Sour Cream Cake

I have long held a great love affair with community cookbooks. You know the kind I mean, I am sure. These are those delightful little collaberations between community and service groups, put together and filled with people's favourite recipes and tried and trues. Inside their pages you will find the fabric and heart of local communities. I think they're pretty special.

For years when my children were growing up, I faithfully checked these types of cookbooks out of my local library week after week and painstakingly copied out recipes from them into my big blue binder . . . I have literally pages and pages of these wonderful little gems . . . and it is only in retrospect that I wish I had taken note of the books that they came from and the names of the contributers.

All I have written down about this one is that it is from an old Nova Scotian Community cookery book, which I don't mind admitting are my favourite ones of all.

It makes a delicious cake that is dense and moist . . . I love it sliced into thin slices and served up with hot drinks . . . but then again . . . I also love it with cold drinks . . .

I guess you could say . . . I just love it altogether!!!



Sour Cream Cake
Serves 10 - 12
Printable Recipe

Dense and moist, this cake falls somewhere between a pound cake and an ordinary layer cake. The Lemon glaze is it's crowning glory.

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups caster sugar
6 large eggs
3 cups plain flour, sifted
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup dairy sour cream
GLAZE:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
the juice of 2 lemons

Pre-heat the oven to 180*C/350*F. Butter a 10 inch tube pan and lightly dust with flour, shaking out any excess.

Put the butter into a large bowl and cream it with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Continue to beat it as you gradually add the sugar, beating it all in well. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and a pinch of salt. Stir together the sour cream and the vanilla.

Add the flour to the creamed mixture in thirds, alternating with the sour cream mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Do not over beat, or the cake will be tough.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Do not open the oven door while it is baking. The cake is done when it is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. If the cake is not done at the end of the hour and a half, bake for an additional 15 minutes before testing again.

Remove from the oven to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing from the pan onto the wire rack. Let cool completely before glazing.

To glaze combine the icing sugar and the lemon juice until smooth. Spoon over the cake and allow it to drizzle down the sides.

If you are like me and like a bit of magic, sprinkle fairy dust and magic over the top before the glaze sets.