Take A Break With Homemade Blueberry Coffee Cake
When life gives you an extra cup of sour cream, what to do? Why, make sugary, wonderful blueberry coffee cake, of course.
OK, so that’s my logic when I had leftover sour cream in the fridge from making another dish. After all, why let all that creamy lusciousness go to waste? With the addition of a little cake flour, plus a nifty trick where you create a poofy rising agent from mixing the sour cream with the baking soda, this recipe creates a sweet treat with a tender, moist, and very soft crumb. It’s from “Baking By Flavor” (John Wiley & Sons) by baking specialist Lisa Yockelson.
Yes, there’s quite a bit of granulated and brown sugar in the topping. But hey, it wouldn’t be coffee cake without it. Plus, this cake has a cup of fresh blueberries strewn throughout. With blueberries so rich in antioxidants, you can tell yourself this cake actually might be just a tiny bit good for you. That’s my logic, and I’m sticking to it.
Blueberry Coffee Cake
(makes one 9-by-9-inch cake, creating 16 squares)
Nonstick cooking spray, for preparing baking pan
For cinnamon and sugar topping:
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup firmly packed light brown sugar, sieved if lumpy
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
For cake batter:
1 cup thick, cultured sour cream
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons unsifted bleached all-purpose flour
¼ cup unsifted bleached cake flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup superfine sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Film the inside of a 9-by-9-by-2-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray; set aside.
In a small mixing bowl, thoroughly combine granulated sugar, light brown sugar, and cinnamon; set aside.
Combine sour cream and baking soda in a medium-size mixing bowl. The mixture will swell and puff a bit as it stands.
Sift flours, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg onto a sheet of waxed paper. In a small mixing bowl, thoroughly toss blueberries with 1 ½ teaspoons of sifted mixture. The blueberries must be well coated with the flour mixture, so that they remain suspended in the cake batter.
Cream butter in large bowl of a freestanding electric mixer on moderately low speed for 2 minutes. Add superfine sugar and beat 1 to 2 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.
On low speed, add half of sifted ingredients, the sour cream-baking soda blend, then the remaining sifted mixture. Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl frequently with a rubber spatula to keep the batter even-textured. The batter will be moderately thick. Fold in blueberries.
Scrape batter into prepared baking pan. Smooth over the top with a rubber spatula or flexible palette knife. Sprinkle topping evenly over surface of batter.
Bake cake in preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until set and a wooden pick inserted in the cake withdraws clean. Cool cake in pan on a rack for at least 20 minutes before cutting into squares for serving. Serve cake warm or at room temperature.
MMMM, I love coffee cake, and I don’t even drink coffee! I have to try that “poofy” rising agent. 🙂
Lisa Yockelson is a genius, and Baking by Flavor is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. Her recipes tend to have a lot of ingredients and take a bit of time, but in the end every single one of them has been worth it. This cake looks terrific!
Good to know that about this cookbook. I confess it had been sitting on my shelf for awhile. This was the first recipe I had made from it, too. With your endorsement, and with how well the coffee cake came out, I will definitely be baking more from it in the days to come.
Following your post I just ordered the cookbook Baking by Flavor because of your beautiful picture and the recipe that I would love to try.
Your food photography is awesome. And you had an excellent subject to work with as Lisa Yockelson’s recipes are fantastic. Thanks for sharing the recipe! I actually have some of that usually-goes-to-waste sour cream in my fridge right now.
Oooh, then you should make the coffee cake for sure. Might as well put the leftover sour cream to good use.
Thanks for the food photography compliment. Believe me, my photo skills still pale compared to most folks. I’m still learning my way. But even I was pretty happy with the coffee cake photo. (whew!)
That looks good!
Thank you for honoring BAKIN GBY FLAVOR
Thank you for honoring BAKING BY FLAVOR with the post and the luscious image of the cake!
Lisa Yockelson
I’d like to try this recipe. I only have all-purpose flour and regular sugar and salted butter – how will these differences effect the final outcome? Thanks.
Hi Eileen:
You could probably forgo the additional salt in the recipe, if you use salted butter instead. Regular sugar is OK to use, too. If you have a food processor or blender, you could whirl the regular sugar in either for a few seconds to get it finer. The finer sugar just makes it dissolve better in the cake batter. Cake flour is a fine-texured, soft-wheat flour with a high starch content. It gives baked goods an especially tender texture. You can use all-purpose flour instead, but the texture of the cake will be a little heavier or denser.
A longtime FoodGal fan (we’ll call him “Marvelous Marvin”), unable to resist “improving” the recipe came up with a version with more fruit (You can’t have enough fruit.) and not as sweet (You want to taste the fruit, not just sweetness, he says).
He used double-strength vanilla and was generous with the cinnamon. The brown sugar was a very dark one which seemed less sweet than the typical supermarket brown sugar.
Blueberry Coffee Cake V3.0
(makes one 9-by-9-inch cake, creating 16 squares)
Nonstick cooking spray, for preparing baking pan
For cinnamon and sugar topping:
1/6 cup granulated sugar
1/6 cup firmly packed light brown sugar, sieved if lumpy
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
For cake batter:
1 cup thick, cultured sour cream
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons unsifted bleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsifted bleached cake flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup superfine sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Film the inside of a 9-by-9-by-2-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray; set aside.
In a small mixing bowl, thoroughly combine granulated sugar, light brown sugar, and cinnamon; set aside.
Combine sour cream and baking soda in a medium-size mixing bowl. The mixture will swell and puff a bit as it stands.
Sift flours, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg onto a sheet of waxed paper. In a small mixing bowl, thoroughly toss blueberries with 1 1/2 teaspoons of sifted mixture. The blueberries must be well coated with the flour mixture, so that they remain suspended in the cake batter.
Cream butter in large bowl of a freestanding electric mixer on moderately low speed for 2 minutes. Add superfine sugar and beat 1 to 2 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.
On low speed, add half of sifted ingredients, the sour cream-baking soda blend, then the remaining sifted mixture. Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl frequently with a rubber spatula to keep the batter even-textured. The batter will be moderately thick. Fold in blueberries.
Scrape batter into prepared baking pan. Smooth over the top with a rubber spatula or flexible palette knife. Sprinkle topping evenly over surface of batter.
Bake cake in preheated oven for 45 – 50 minutes, or until set and a wooden pick inserted in the cake withdraws clean. Cool cake in pan on a rack for at least 20 minutes before cutting into squares for serving. Serve cake warm or at room temperature.
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Thank you for the nice recipes.