Recipes Sour Cream Coffee Cake

This is my FAVORITE recipe for Sour Cream Coffee Cake! My main complaint with Coffee Cake is that there is usually too much cake, not enough streusel. This recipe gives you the max amount of streusel without ruining the light fluffiness of the cake! A vanilla drizzle finishes it off for the perfect cake-for-breakfast situation. Originally posted October 12, 2019.

Happy birthday to meeee! It’s not actually my birthday, it’s The Food Charlatan’s birthday! Eight years ago I published my first recipe here on this little blog. I called it “The Food Charlatan” because I didn’t know how to cook really at all.

Now here we are 8 years later and I’ve conned you all into thinking that I know what I’m doing. Mwahahaha! Don’t get me wrong, I am much more comfortable in the kitchen than I was 8 years ago, and I never publish a recipe on this blog that I don’t have complete confidence in. (You can trust today’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake, for example. It’s legiiiiit.)

Sour Cream Coffee Cake {15 Minutes Of Prep!}

But I still have a lot to learn! It’s so fun sharing my food journey with all of you guys. Seriously, I’m so glad you’re here! Blogging would be boring without you!

To celebrate 8 years blogging, I thought I would share a random sample of emails/comments that I get from readers on a regular basis. These are the fun ones. Reader comments are in

I’m sure your a good person, with a kind heart, are you aware that a charlatan is in essence a con man, a ripoff and other unfriendly things?

Extra Crumb Cinnamon Struesel Sour Cream Coffee Cake

I don’t have a cookbook yet, but I hope I will someday! They are a ton of work and I don’t want to miss my kids growing up. Someday when they are older I’ll do it. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if I write a cookbook. Probably you will be sick of hearing about it by the time I’m through!

I tried to use your website, but it’s just so busy, with so many videos and ads loading constantly I just could not.

Ah, the frustration with ads. I get it, they are annoying. It makes me sad that some people think all I care about is the bottom line. One guy even told me once that he was sure I was only making a few cents on those ads, so I should take them off.

Grandma's Sour Cream Coffee Cake

I make a full time income from this blog. It feeds my family. It’s also a butt-ton of work. I’m providing well-researched recipes to serve my readers. You don’t have to pay to access these recipes (remember when you had to, like, PAY to buy cookbooks??), but you do have to put up with the ads so that I can keep the content coming!

You sound like a lovely lady of faith and that is a big draw for me. I’m a grandma of deep faith and I love that young ladies are not ashamed to announce that they are as well.

I get emails about my religion on a regular basis, and I love it! I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I believe that Jesus is my Savior and that we have a living prophet on the earth today. It’s awesome. If you have any questions, I’d love to talk to you about it. Message me on Instagram!

Moist Sour Cream Coffee Cake

These Homemade Pretzel Hot Dogs from The Food Charlatan take me back to my mall-rat days, when I’d blow my allowance on the sales racks at Contempo Casuals and 5-7-9. (Coincidentally, treats like these are also detrimental to me returning to the 5, 7, OR 9.)

A comment in response to Soft and Sticky Caramel Pecan Rolls, where I announced that I was pregnant and explained that morning sickness kept me from posting new recipes for several months. (Apparently some people thought they were having computer issues):

I’m so happy for you and your family Karen! And most thankful you are no longer having the horrors of morning..noon…and night sickness! I, too, was one of those ignorant folk that could not figure out why I was no longer getting your posts…giving hubby a bad rap (thought he deleted some of my “good stuff”) I will apologize to him when I finish here.)

Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe

Probably my favorite email of all time though was when someone told me that my blog posts were too long. I needed to shorten them up and stop telling dumb stories about my kids because there’s not enough space “on the cloud” for all this content. I swear. I died laughing!

For every annoyed person who messages to inform me that they don’t care about my stories/my kids/”just give me the recipes already, ” I get three messages like this:

I have been receiving your emails/blog for a while now and I just wanted to contact you and tell you how much I enjoy it! I love your recipes (I’ve made so, so many and always pass them on to friends), but I also love reading about you and your family! Your blog makes me laugh and I find it so relatable! I am also a stay at home Mom. Your stories remind me of when my kids were younger, and always have me in stitches. As soon as I see an email from you, I get so excited to read what’s been going on in your life – you’ve always got the best stories! Your sense of humour is amazing and I think that’s what keeps Moms going – a great sense of humour!

Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Thank you, thank you, to all of you who support me in my storytelling. I get that sometimes you just want to get to the recipe, and that’s totally fine, that’s what scrolling is for. But telling stories is the real reason I’ve stuck with this blog for so long, and hearing from my real readers (not just those passing through) that they still want that content is such a motivator for me. Like you, if you got to the bottom of this, you’re a real reader :) Thanks for taking the time! I love you.

You guys this Sour Cream Coffee Cake is INSANE. I love it so much! I worked on this recipe for a while and had quite a few failure cakes before I landed on this version. (See?? #charlatan)

Coffee cake has no coffee in it, it’s a basic yellow cake with layers of cinnamon sugar streusel meant to be enjoyed with a cup of coffee. Or with a glass of milk, if you’re like me!

Sour Cream Blueberry Coffee Cake

I don’t want a yellow cake with some streusel on top. Basically I want some cake with my streusel, not the other way around. I mean, right? Am I the only one who is obsessed with crumbly streusel? It’s SO GOOD. I did the same thing for this Apple Crisp With a Ridiculous Amount of Streusel. It was a lot easier to increase the streusel on that recipe because apples don’t need to rise. It took me a few tries to get the right ratio of cake to streusel, so that the streusel stayed on top and didn’t just sink into a sad, dense cake.

The good news is that all the ingredients are pretty much kitchen staples, so as long as you have sour cream, you might be good to go without even a trip to the store.

If you’re out of sour cream, feel free to swap it for buttermilk. But who are we kidding? No one who’s out of sour cream happens to have buttermilk on hand. So what I really mean is that you can replace the sour cream with a homemade buttermilk substitution. Add about 1 and 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar into your 1 and ½ cup measuring cup, and then fill to the top with whole milk. Stir and wait five minutes. Boom, you’re good to go!

Old Fashioned Sour Cream Coffee Cake

BUT, disclaimer here, cheater buttermilk is not as rich and thick as real buttermilk, and it’s WAY less rich than sour cream. So your cake isn’t going to be quite as amazing if you cheat. Surprise surprise, right.

(The photo on the left is after the butter is mixed into the dry ingredients. Photo on the right is the final batter. It’s okay if your finished batter has a few lumps in it, but overall it should be light and fluffy.)

We are adding 2 layers of streusel in between cake batter layers. This means you really do get streusel in every single bite, not just a layer in the middle and on top. I really should have just called this Streusel Cake.

Cinnamon Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe

I love this coffee cake just the way it is, but don’t be afraid to make it the way you like it! Here are some ideas to inspire you.

Your streusel is going to sink if you don’t have enough leavener in your cake (baking powder, etc). That’s no problem in this cake, it has plenty. The only other thing to worry about is your streusel just being too heavy, so we are adding it in layers.

You

Cinnamon Sour Cream Coffee Cake — Bless This Mess