Hello,

I love sour cream cake.  I recently had one that was more pound cake-like in texture.  I followed the recipe to the letter, at least I thought.  The cake was good, but it was more cake-like, rather than pound cake-
What could I be doing wrong?  My eggs were at room temperature, but my butter could have been softer.

annc - 03 March 2013 04:44 PM

I love sour cream cake.  I recently had one that was more pound cake-like in texture.  I followed the recipe to the letter, at least I thought.

If this wasn’t a Rose recipe, you’ll have to post it, because we have to know what you were trying to achieve before we can guess as to where you might have gone awry. It’s always possible that you did everything right, and the recipe is designed to produce a fluffy cake.

Here are the ingredients list.

The cake is baked at 350 for 1 hour.

2 c. sour cream
2 3/4 c. sugar
2 sticks butter
2 c. flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 T. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
1 T. baking soda
1 T. cinnamon
2 c. chopped nuts

annc - 04 March 2013 04:36 PM

Here are the ingredients list.

One observation is that this is a HUGE amount of leavening. Traditional pound cake recipes don’t include any at all. Rose’s recipe includes a small amount of baking powder, which she says functions mainly to make the crumb finer, rather than to lighten the cake to any significant degree. However, this recipe also includes a huge amount of sour cream; if you don’t add the baking soda, the cake batter would likely be acidic and wouldn’t brown very well.

Are you sure that’s really a tablespoon of baking soda? I see other recipes that only have 1/2 tsp for 1 cup of sour cream, suggesting that you might just need 1 tsp.

I agree with Charles!

Here is Rose’s sour cream butter cake, it is one of my all-time favorite cakes:  http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2005/10/roses_favorite_yellow_layer_ca.html