Soured cream cinnamon cake

My nephew and trusty sidekick, The Boy Wonder, made this cake for part of the CakeFest celebration. It’s one of those reasonably plain looking but deliciously tasty cakes. The topping of sugar, cinnamon and hazelnuts also runs through the middle of the cake packing it full of spicy goodness but whereas the top stays dry and crumblike, the middle turns sticky and rich.


The smell of the cake whilst baking was tempting. There’s something about the smell of warm cinnamon (and vanilla...and chocolate...and coconut etc) that speaks to my very soul!


The nuts added a nice bit of texture to the cake. The original recipe used pecans, and while I love pecans, the Caked Crusader’s Ma (CCM) doesn’t get on with them, so in order not to poison a CakeFest guest (think of the bad PR) we switched to hazelnuts.


Ingredients:
For the cake:
210ml soured cream
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
250g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

For the topping:
50g brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
25g chopped hazelnuts or pecans


How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line a 20cm springform tin.
- Mix the soured cream and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and put to one side.
- Start by making the topping: mix all the ingredients together and put to one side.
- Now make the cake: Cream together the butter and sugar until pale, light and fluffy. Don’t skimp as this is an important stage.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla.
- Add the flour, baking powder and soured cream mix to the bowl and stir until well combined.
- Spoon half the batter into the prepared cake tin and level.
- Sprinkle half the topping mix over the batter.
- Spoon the remaining batter over the topping and scatter the remaining topping on top.
- Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. Mine took 45 minutes.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.