Sara's Sour Cream Cake

Sara Pedersen was a colleague at UCLA when I did my Ph.D there in the late 1960s. She subsequently married a professor at Cornell in Ithaca and I lost touch with her. But this recipe has been a standard of my repertoire.

                                       Baked February 2015 with Arianna, my granddaughter
                                       now aged 6.

1 cup sweet butter

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Topping

½ cup finely chopped nuts

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

For Dusting

Icing Sugar

 

• Cream butter and sugar.
• Add eggs, sour cream and vanilla and beat well.
• Gradually add the sifted flour, baking powder and soda.
• When mixture is too thick to beat, stir with a spoon until well blended.
• Place half of the batter into a buttered 9 inch tube spring pan.
• Shake to make the batter even.
• Sprinkle half of the topping mixture over the batter.
• Carefully spoon the remaining batter into the pan and smooth out evenly.
• Sprinkle the remaining topping over the batter.
• Bake at 350º Fahrenheit for one hour.
• Sprinkle icing sugar over the top when the cake is still hot.
• Let cool for at least 15-20 minutes before cutting.