Moosewood Sour Cream Coffee Cake, february 2010

It's a cake marathon this week.

This is the second cake I made in honor of my birthday, inspired by my Aunt Eileen, (who makes a wicked coffee cake), this cake is something else: light, rich and creamy, with a pleasant crackling of pecans. Despite the fact that it's from the Moosewood Cookbook, don't worry, this was before they got all healthy, there are enough calories in this baby to keep you on the treadmill for a week.

Moosewood Sour Cream Coffeecake

from The Moosewood Cookbook

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar

2 eggs

3/4 cups sour cream

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups white flour

1 cup toasted pecans

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional)

about 1 tablespoon powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a bundt pan.

Cream butter with 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Beat in eggs until throughly blendt. Beat in sour cream, vanilla, baking powder, soda and slat. Gently stir in flour until totally incorporated.

Coarsely chop pecans, toss with nutmeg, cinnamon and remaining sugar.

Spoon half the batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle nut mixture evenly over batter in pan. Spoon rest of the batter over the mix. Bake cake until knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 50 to 70 minutes. (50 for a bundt, 55 to 75 minutes for cake baked in a square pan.) Cool in pan on rack. Turn out onto plate after 10 minutes. When completely cool, dust cake with powdered sugar. It makes people think you worked a lot harder than you actually did.