An Apple Sour Cream Cake (minus the sour cream!) - An Heirloom Recipe Series

Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another Heirloom Recipe on Extra Food Chat with Kath!

This Apple Sour Cream Cake has been the most difficult recipe to recreate out of this heirloom recipe series so far! So much so, it is no longer an Apple Sour Cream Cake, but an Apple Cinnamon Cake with Coconut Crumble.

There weren’t any tears, but there was frustration, cakes in the bin and now a need to not make an apple cake for a little while! But I am happy to finally be able to share this recipe with you (the testing for it began in early July!). And if you have a couple of apples you aren’t sure what do to with - make this cake!

I have no recollection of my Grandma making this Apple and Sour Cream Cake, though the recipe does look like it has been used. I have no idea how she found this recipe, or if she made it regularly or maybe never at all. I wonder if she had issues with the recipe like I did? If she did I can’t imagine my Grandma spending so much time tinkering with the recipe to try and make it better as I have. I can more imagine her setting the recipe aside and moving on to something else, or retuning to a tried and tested favourite. I phrase I remember her saying a fair bit was ‘can’t be bothered’ after all!

My recipe testing started with an Apple Cinnamon Slice recipe, that also used sour cream. I tried it and while the quantities of flour and sour cream could have done with some tweaking the initial finished slice was nice. I would have added some vanilla next time, but the slice had a very cake-y fluffy texture. The next day however, the slice was so dense it wasn’t nice to eat. It got thrown out.

Then, there was what started as an Apple Sour Cream Cake. Since it looked quite similar to the slice recipe I tried, I thought I should give it a go and see if it worked better. The first cake I made using the original recipe, was absolutely massive (like a very deep 23cm round cake), and had so much apple in it that the cake struggled to cook through. It mostly just ‘set’ rather than baked in to anything that resembled a cake texture.

That cake also went in the bin, but I knew the next time changes would need to be made. The second time around I made the recipe but reduced the quantities so the cake wouldn’t be so big. I also made it in a 20cm round tin, since I had reduced the quantities. The only other changes I made was the use all self raising flour, rather than a combination of self raising and plain flours, and I used more cinnamon and added vanilla.

This second cake again was quite big (luckily my 20cm round tin was quite deep!), and the cake peaked a bit on top, I think due to using all self raising flour. The cake did actually cook this time, though I decided I would go back to using a larger round cake tin next time as the cake was just too deep. I also came the conclusion, that sour cream in cakes gives a lovely fluffy texture on the day they are baked, but after that the cake becomes more dense and is less enjoyable to eat.

I personally found the use of sour cream made the cake a little rich for me, however mostly, I am not interested in cakes that are only nice to eat the day they are made. If I am going to the effort of making something, I want it to last a few days at least. Whole cakes will not be eaten all in one day in my family, so it feels wasteful if something won’t be enjoyed after that. Maybe the original stipulation of using light sour cream would be worth a try - I only stuck with full fat sour cream as, while I have no issue with reduced fat dairy, I know most bakers prefer to use full fat dairy when baking (and seem to have very strong feelings about it!).

For my next attempt, I went back to a 23cm springform tin, reduced the quantity of the butter in the crumble (there was just too much before), went back to the split between self raising and plain flour and swapped the sour cream in the cake for Greek style yoghurt.

I much preferred the cake with Greek style yoghurt, and the fact that I had the reduced quantities and used a 23cm tin meant the cake wasn’t nearly as deep. While I still think the cake is at its absolute best the day it is made, it will last 3 or so days in an airtight container. It would be great served warm as a dessert, and since its a large cake you could feed a few people out of it.

If you knew the cake would be eaten all on the day you make it, you could definitely use sour cream rather than yoghurt - and then the cake would be more like the original Apple Sour Cream Cake. But I think I will continue making this cake with Greek style yoghurt, I might even give it a go with buttermilk another time (when I’m ready to make an apple cake again!).