Grandma Welling's Sour Cream Coffee Cake

My maternal grandmother's sour cream coffee cake is the standard dish my mother would bring to any breakfast or brunch gathering. My sister makes it frequently as well. I have made it several times with various gluten-free flour mixes, and it has always come out super tasty. This time I used a brown rice/potato starch/tapioca flour mix and added 3/4 tsp of xantham gum to the dry ingredients.

Since I'm loving my new muffin tin, I decided to make Grandma Welling's Sour Cream Coffee Cake in it instead of an eight-inch square pan (that I don't have anyway). Sour cream is a little hard to find here—if, however, you want double cream, triple cream or cream fraiche, you certainly will have many options to choose from—and lite or non-fat sour cream is unheard of. To cut down on the fat, I used half sour cream and half low fat, Greek style yogurt. The cake was as moist as I desired, but I could have cut down on the sugar a bit. It wasn't too sweet, but the sour cream taste was muted.
Muffins waiting to go in the oven. Although they look completely covered with topping, more should have been added.

I realized that I was a bit stingy with the topping; the muffin expands while baking so you need to saturate the top with the cinnamon, sugar and walnut mixture. Some of the topping actually trickled down the side of the muffin and end up at the bottom. This was a nice treat, spreading the cinnamon taste into more mouthfuls. Another plus about the muffins: they took half the time to cook.

The muffins which disappeared in our bellies within 24 hours.

Grandma Welling's Sour Cream Coffee Cake
(can be doubled and cooked in 13x9 pan)

Cream together (in large bowl): 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup sugar

Add: 2 eggs (one at a time), 1 tsp vanilla and 1 cup sour cream

Mix together: 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda and 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Add: dry ingredients to butter mixture

Grease and flour: 8 inch square pan (or muffin tin—12 muffins)

Pour: batter into pan (spoon into muffin tin)

Sprinkle: topping (1/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon and chopped walnuts) on top of batter before baking

Bake: at 350° for 45 minutes (20-25 minutes for muffins)