cinnamon-chocolate chip sour cream cake
Of course, there’s not a whole lot to say about mom’s sour cream cinnamon chocolate chip coffee cake except that a) It’s absolutely perfect in every possible way — soft, plushy bites of uber-moist goodness broken up by cinnamon-sugar crusted chocolate chips. b) Be careful biting into it as it might make you feel unintentionally wronged by every coffee cake that has crossed your palate before it. c) He hasn’t said it in so many words (except, notably, “If your mom isn’t making that coffee cake I’m not coming over for Yom Kippur.”) but I think it may be the real reason Alex married me.
And d) I’m not even offended.
Cinnamon-Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Cake
1 stick unsalted butter (4 ounces or 8 tablespoons) at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs, separated
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
16 ounces sour cream
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
12 ounces chocolate chips
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, cream butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar, then mix in the egg yolks and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda and baking powder together into a separate bowl. Alternately add sour cream and then dry ingredients into butter mixture. Beat eggs whites until stiff, then fold into batter. Mix last 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon together in a separate, small dish.
In a greased 9″x13″ pan, pour in half of the cake batter. Sprinkle the top with half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture and half of the chocolate chips. Pour remaining batter on top, sprinkling the top with the remaining cinnamon-sugar and chocolate chips.
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
Fairly high praise! Looks super good.
Love the look of that top.
Hi Deb,
I’m a longtime reader but first-time commenter… love the site! And that coffee cake looks amazing.
Anyway, I’m sure you get recipe requests all the time, so no obligation of course… but I’m trying to find a good recipe for pumpkin bread and having some trouble. I made a great easy chocolate-chip pumpkin bread a few years ago and can’t figure out where the recipe came from or what I did with it. Any ideas?
Thanks so much!!
Jill
Hi Deb,
Glad you are feeling better.
I would like to make this cake. Silly question from the Canadian: what is 1 stick of butter equivalent to in cups?
I think I’ll have to make that for my Thanksgiving guests who are staying over Thursday night. Or even if no one decides to stay. Because, Yum!
Cat, check Deb´s tools section, it has most conversions there.
1 stick = 4 ounces = 8 tablespoons = ½ cup
After such high praise, I´m gonna have to make this cake (so please stop twisting my arm :P). But the problem is sour cream is not available here. At Cooking for engineers, one of the substitution choices they give is plain yogurt. Do you think I would get an equivalent result with this recipe using plain yogurt?
Great! I’m going to make this for Christmas Day brunch at my Aunt’s house.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Marce – I make pancakes with either sour cream, ricotta or yogurt and they are all good and somewhat similar. Sour cream and ricotta tend to give greater desnity and moisture in pancake texture (hard to describe) than yogurt. A suggestion. If you use yogurt, I would use some non-gelatin kind (i.e., not dannon or yoplait) and let it drain for a bit in some cheesecloth (otherwise it might increase the fluids too much). I expect using ricotta would throw off the acid balance, but since it’s baking powder on not soda maybe it would be okay, or mabe add a squeeze of lemon? Yogurt would probably be a safer bet.
This coffee cake looks scrumptious!
YUMMGUMMMYUMGUM Chocolate chip cake good.
Ooh, yum. This is just like my mom’s coffee cake. I’m going to have her dig up the recipe for me when I go home over the weekend.
Yum! You know something is going to be delicious when the title of it has to be that long just to describe its goodness.
I am so making this. Would it be wrong to run out from work right now to do so?
Deb, This looks amazing! As a teacher, occasionally I take in treats for my students after finishing big projects. This will be perfect as they are just finishing up writing a paper! As always, Thank You!!!
P.S. You are the inspiration for my blog these days!!! I really appreciate your example! Thanks so much!
Oh lord, your great NaBloPoMo is killing me, I have so many recipes racked up to try that I’m drowning. I”m currently doing NaNoWriMo so at this point in the month, cooking is taking a backseat (oops) but I am SMITTEN with your KITCHEN. Haha sorry that was really corny. Mmm… cake.
It does look amazing — wonderful blog!
Looks yummy!
If you did it again, would you coat the choc. in flour so they don’t all just sink to the bottom? Or is that part of what makes it so good?
So, this is totally unrelated to the coffee-cake post (but somehow, I can’t find the recipe to which I will refer…anyway, sorry for the misplaced comment).
Last night I made the Couscous and Feta-Stuffed Peppers, which were really good. However, I have a question…unless I missed it, I can’t figure out what I was supposed to do with the tomato paste.
The ingredients list “3 tbsp tomato paste” – but nowhere in the recipe does it say to use the tomato paste.
Can you enlighten me?
MMmmmm yum! I made this cake this evening and it was wonderful. I did not have sour cream, so I substituted lowfat yogurt. Unfortunately the yogurt was vanilla flavor instead of plain. I was worried about it being too sweet, so I added instant espresso powder (1/4 cup) to the sugar/chocolate chip mixture and I think that helped.
Also very much enjoying NaBloPoMo! I am quite impressed you’re doing all this with your hurt arm – hope it gets better soon.
Rachael 1- Thanks for the answer. I have both ricotta and whole plan yogurt. I think I´ll go with the yogurt and let it drain for a while just in case.
Rachael 2- Thanks to you too for confirming it works with yogurt. Mine has no sugar, so I shouldn´t have a problem with the sweetness.
Denise- I figured the tomato paste was mixed with the couscous mix. I did it like that and it tasted great.
Deb- I´m not trying to steal your position answering questions. I´m just nosy like that. Besides, I wanted to help, you have to do all of it with one (or one and a half) hands ;)
Tanna – Usually, the top is even crunchier but mom was in a rush and covered the pan with foil just out of the oven. If possible, this made it taste better than ever.
Jill – I actually haven’t found the perfect pumpkin bread yet either, but I did have my mother (again with the mom!) try this one, which she said was very good but needed a lot more spice. I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste, but if you like it spicier, just go ahead and double all of them. Pumpkin seems to absorb all these flavors well. And of course, you can replace the walnuts with flour-dusted chocolate chips (floured so they don’t sink).
Jill – Looks like Marce answered first but 1 stick is a quarter pound, 8 tablespoons and ½ cup melted, too.
Jessie – Let us know how it goes!
Marce – I have actually made this with yogurt before and it came out just fine. Rachael’s advice below is even better. Oh, and you are so *allowed* (please!) to answer questions in the comments. I really wanted to get to these questions sooner but day job, daily posting and baking two cheesecakes tonight has been a whirlwind.
Tammi – Hope you like it!
Rachael – Thank you thank you. Excellent advice. I even wonder if buttermilk could work – it having that tangy dairy thing – but wouldn’t know how much to replace it with without trying it myself.
Hilary – You should, and share it. I’d love to compare.
Jennifer – Heh. I’ve been trying to reign in my titles, too. (This from a girl who once titled a post “conversations in the past month that have led me to say to my fiancé: i don’t know why my parents have to spend so much money on this party when we are clearly, already married.” and another “instances in the past week that have caused my husband to refer to me as a curmudgeon”.)
Jennifer – Nope, such behavior is encouraged at the Smitten Kitchen.
Married Girl – I brought this cake into school so many times growing up, so I can attest, it’s perfect for the cause.
Yvo, Rebekah – Thank you.
MW – So, I didn’t know how to mention this but my mother (sorry mom!) kind of threw the cake together in a rush and didn’t follow the half batter, half chips, half cinnamon-sugar, etc. technique which is why all the chips are at the bottom. While this was still very very delicious in every possible way, if you make it the way I describe it above, the chips don’t sink. Le voila!
Denise – Oh no! I will fix that, though it doesn’t help you much now. I added the tomato paste but forgot to say where. I believe I just mixed it in right before I stuffed the peppers. I loved the couscous dish, it just needed a little something-something to bind the flavors together. I hope it still came out okay!
Rachael – Was it still good? I bet this cake is pretty flexible and the coffee sounds wonderful, too.
I think the yogurt worked well, though I haven’t had the sour cream so I’m not sure how it would compare (I also did 2tsp baking powder and no soda because I was worried that the yogurt was too acidic). It was definitely sweet…the coffee balanced that out a little bit, but I think next time I’d try the sour cream or plain yogurt.
I had some for breakfast and was just as moist and yummy as the night before (receiving some arched eyebrows from my S.O. when I put a slice on his plate too! Cake for breakfast? But of course!)
Thanks, Deb!! Much appreciated :-)
Wow. I threw this together as a replacement for my raspberry-bottomed cheesecake that is always too heavy after the big meal. And it was more than a hit–it was a sensation. We tucked into it as soon as it cooled Wednesday night, snacked on it throughout Thursday, and were fighting over the crumbs by Friday morning. I’m home from family festivities now and am planning on running out to the store in a bit for the supplies to make another pan, so I can eat it every morning for the rest of my life.
So, basically, thanks for a stupendous recipe!
Wow. This looks delicious. I have 1/2 a tub of sour cream lingering in my refrigerator begging to be used. This is a must-bring to the office especially since it got an A+ at school. :) Thanks for sharing
I made this last week, my first smittenkitchen recipe!!! They were so tasty and my coworkers enjoyed them. It was so easy that I’ll make this a standard treat!
My first Smitten recipe to get made as well, but I think I must have got my conversions to metric a bit off, as the batter was very stiff, and I had enough chocolate chips to feed a small principality. Nice though! Served it with fresh raspberries and some creme chantille for a post BBQ pudding and it was well received. I suspect it should be moister though…
I’ve been reading for awhile yet have never posted until now. Thanks for the great recipes and entertainment on my lunch break! I made this coffee cake over the holidays and it didn’t look at all like the pictures (though the taste was delicious) – it was very cake-like and it rose a bit, and your pictures suggest a denser texture with a shorter profile. I wondered if I had whipped the egg whites too much? Anyway, I’m not complaining in the least (!), it’s a great recipe that I plan to use again, I was just curious. Thanks!!
With that kind of praise, this is going straight to my recipes-to-try list!
Just thought I’d let you know that I’ve made this a couple of times for my roommates and it is a favorite. I cook breakfast every Friday morning, and colossal cheer is the perfect way to describe my roommates’ reaction when they see this in the oven. When I look for breakfast ideas I come here first, and then head over to epicurious if I don’t have the right ingredients to recreate something you’ve made. Anyways, just thought I’d let you know, because one of my roommates grinned as I pulled this out of the oven, “This is my very favorite!” she said.
This looks incredibly good. I think I’ll have to make this!
BTW, your blog is amazing!
Erin
Hi Deb….love your site I think it is cook’s paradise…I would love the make the Choc. chip Sour Cream Cake but I live in Australia and we have different weights so if you could tell me how much a stick of butter is I would appreciate it very much…Keep the good work up and regards from OZ…Pat
Hi Pat — A stick of butter is about 112 grams, 4 ounces or 1/4 pound. Hope that helps!
Hi Deb,
Your food always literally makes me salivate at work – yum! I just wanted to say I tried this cake the other night and it was delicious!!! Very popular with the office, the doorman, the boyfriend, the roommate, and obviously myself. There was a problem with the eggs being beaten to stiff peaks which I chronicled on my blog (um, I tried to do it by hand, enough said), but it was awesome nonetheless! Thanks for the great recipes! (and of course I gave you credit!)
I’m a bit gutted because I thought this was going to be a cake “moment” for me but I foolishly did a bit of substituting and didn’t think hard enough about quantities. so I ended up with a cake that was tasty on the edges and not quite cooked in the centre. This wouldn’t be so bad except I used my stash of chocolate chips which I brought all the way from the states last year and I can’t bear the waste!! However, I will try again and succeed. BTW, although I was unhappy with my cake, several other people ate it and said it was good, so I know that success lies not far away.
I’m jealous of all your pictures by the way, you have a way with light that I have totally failed to master thus far. Onwards and upwards!!
My first smitten kitche recipe. I think it turned out pretty well. My only problem was I think I didn’t portion the dough properly when I put the first layer in, meaning I put too much on the bottom, then layered the chip mixture and when I put the second layer of dough there wasn’t enough to cover the mid layer of chip mixture. I also think next time I make this I want to use mini-chips. The ones I used were just a bit too big. I was just psyched I got to use my new stand mixer three times; once for the dough, once for the egg white and once for the whipped cream I topped it with before serving.
I know this is an old recipe now, but I just saw it because of your link to the post on 31 Sept. It looks delicious!
Quick question… the instructions say:
“In a large bowl, cream butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar,”
Is that referring to 3 ingredients or 2? I.E. is ‘cream’ a verb or is it part of the sour cream?
Sorry if it’s a noob question, but I’m no genius in the kitchen (yet!).
Matty–
I just made this last night – and “creaming” the butter and sugar means to mix with an electric mixture. So it’s just two ingredients. Hope this helps!
And oh my goodness, is this ever good and addicting.
Thanks Jackie!
I’m making them tonight! mmmmmmm…….
Hi, I was wondering if you used salted or unsalted butter. Since there is no salt in the recipe, it made me think maybe it was salted? Thanks!
(i’m a sneaky RSS reader-reader but i love the site!)
i linked to this from the DELICIOUS apple cake post… and wowww this is delicious! random questions — why do you refer to it as coffee cake when there is… no.. coffee? and also, how long do you typically whip the eggs before they’re considered stiff?
So I think I am behind the times and just found this recipe last week. I have made it twice and it is FANTASTIC!! Moist, just enough chocolate, and so damn good. I wish I found it 2 years ago…
This cake was one of the hits of my post-Thanksgiving brunch. It is strikingly close to an old Swiss recipe I make. Thank you!
I see I commented two years ago and I didn’t make it that year for some reason. But I am in fact making it for Christmas Day breakfast at my Aunt’s house THIS year. Can’t wait.
I made this substituting frozen blueberries and lemon juice for the vanilla and chocolate chips. It took much longer to cook this way, about 20 minutes more, but it was great and am making it again this evening so my friend can have some decent food to take to work – it will last her at least a week. ( I use organic ingredients, and reduce the amount of leavening to make it healthier than regular store-bought food.)
I’m going to try it without the sugar topping – just want to see what it’s like with a regular crust. Yum.
Old post, I know, but I have some advice regarding substituting yogurt for sour cream. T
Ahh, my post got cut off. Anyway, to achieve they thick consistency of sour cream that yogurt doesn’t have, you have to drain the water out of it. To do this, line a sieve with paper towel and place it over a bowl. Measure out plain yogurt (equal to the amount of sour cream needed, 16 ounces in this case) and put it in the sieve, on top of the paper towel. Put the sieve and bowl in the fridge for about an hour- you’ll notice that water will collect in the bottom of the bowl and the yogurt will be thicker. You can now use the yogurt in place of sour cream.
(this works with low-fat and regular yogurt, but not as well with fat-free)
I just finished making this for our Mother’s Day brunch tomorrow. It looks so yummy! I’m so excited! I wish I could taste it right now, but have to wait till tomorrow. Thanks for a wonderful recipe!
Oh YUM! I made this on Sunday for my boyfriend’s mum’s birthday (and the white bean-red pepper dip as a starter). Both went down an absolute treat, earning rave reviews. I love this cake- so moist, so fluffy, so chocolately! I made it in my 9″ round spring-form tin, as that is all I have. I was a bit worried, because it filled up so much of the pan, and I was anxious about it cooking all the way through. It took a little over 60 minutes, but it turned out beautifully. Best part is that my bf and I can continue to enjoy it for the rest of the week. And just in the nick of time since we just saw off the last of ‘your favourite’ chocolate chip cookies (amazing). You’re killing me!
This recipe is amazing. Thank you!
Thanks to you, I made it out to my local Y to swim off the chunks of coffee cake that have adhered to my hips….
The recipe turned out beautifully, despite my two little helpers — almost two and five years — and they have been dancing around the kitchen, begging to have little slices for snack time.
Thanks!
It cooked up in 45 minutes in my oven but as soon as the cake totally cooled off the chips became hard masses of chocolate – not all of the chips completly melted and when the ones that did cooled off they became hard clumps. While it was warm it was edible but as it cooled it became “chips with cake bits around it” instead of cake with chocolate chips in it. It rose beautifully – was pretty to look at, and my chips didnt sink but its not quite edible except for the most die hard chocohalics. FYI -I used Trader Joes choc chips.
Hi Deb: This cake was delicious! But it didn’t look at all like the photo. The top was a very pale beige, not a rich brown like in the photo. Any ideas why it would look so different? Yours is so much more appetizing-looking.
I made this late last night and by this afternoon it was all gone! Amazing!
My parents are visiting and I made this cake.
Now they won’t go home.
I’ve been eyeballing this for a while and let me say… WOW. I feel like anything I put together from your site is a winner. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
PS – this baked up HUGE in my oven! I was not expecting that!
I just made this last night, and I think it turned out pretty good – although maybe too much cinnamon/sugar mix on the top of the cake.
I have to agree with Emily – mine baked up huge in the oven as well. :-)
My mother has a varient of this cake that’s even better. Pretty much the same recipe with the exception that she adds chopped walnuts to the chocoloate chip mixture , bakes it in an angelfood cake pan, and lightly swirls all of the chocolate/nut/cinamon mixture into the batter just before baking to create a vein throughout the cake.
Yummmm…I want to bring this to my boyfriend’s Yom Kippur break fast dinner. Would I be able to make it two days before (ie. Saturday for Monday night dinner?) Or is it best the first day?
This was the hit of the Rosh Hashana gathering. I used mini Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips which melted almost into a swirl in the center. Lovely!
I’ve made this twice in the past few weeks. The first time I selfishly kept most of it at home and shared it with a few (very grateful) coworkers and friends. It stayed in good shape for more than just a few days. The second go-round was for a weekend away with friends… that baby didn’t make it more than 24 hours!
There’s probably no way you’ll see this in time, but do you suppose it would bake up okay in a bundt pan? :)
I haven’t tried it in a bundt pan before but if you do, let us know how it goes. I am sure others would like to find out too.
You are the best! I think I’m going to give it a shot and will post a comment letting you know the outcome.
Deb, I made these today but I did not have a pan to make them in, so I turned them into muffins! They came out great, and using chocolate AND toffee only sweetened the deal!
The bundt pan worked great! It did completely fill a large, traditional bundt — one of the newer, smaller ones would probably be too small. Fortunately, there was no overflow or anything.
nom nom nommmm! I tried this a couple weekends ago and had been craving it ever since, so now I’m waiting for another one to finish baking :) Delicious!
I am so sad that I just discovered this recipe. Seriously, out of this world!! Nothing better than that cinnamony-sugary crispy topping crunching in your mouth then the smooth burst of chocolate. Oh Oh Oh….there really is nothing better.
Hihihiii!!!! I love your blog, so much. I’ve been working my way through your cookies and cakes for a few months now and every recipe has been one success after another. Any idea on an alternate bake time if I were to turn this into two small loaves?
Hi ….its baking in the oven as we speak but the batter was REALLY thick – is that normal?
I’ve been testing our recipes for a community ed cooking class-and this one made the cut for my coffee cakes class!! My husband was very sad this morning, when after just one piece I brought it into work (we would love to have a new cake each night, but we would gain 20 pounds!) It was polished off by 9am. Oh my goodness yummy! By the way, I used chocolate chunks, and my husband sliced a banana over the top of it, which added something fabulous. I’m thinking about making little loaf pans of this as gifts this Christmas!
Hi Deb– Just made this for tomorrow morning’s brunch. I am so pleased with how it turned out– just tasted a corner and it is so fluffy and delicious. Not sure why, but the cinnamon sugar on top didnt really bake in and it is kind of still loosely sitting on top of the cake.
I love this cake because it came out exactly as you would imagine. The cake was moist and not overly sweet while the cinnamon sugar topping was crunchy. The only part that I found a to be a bit tricky was folding the egg whites into the batter since the batter was rather thick. Its a great cake for any time or occasion.
Despite many dirty bowls – this cake was worth it. I like the taste better the next day. I’ll use mini-chips next time, too.
first of all your pumpkin jacob is too cute!
secondly, i made this recipe last night and i found it super easy to make, clear instructions (thank you!) and super yummy. that diet i was talking about, yea, that will have to wait til after the cake ;)
it was certainly a crowd pleaser today at my family get together!
i am considering the suggestion of using mini chips next time, but not sure…i kinda like the decadence of the whole chip!
i found that i didn’t put enough cinnamon mixture in the middle of the cake so i ended up with a bunch on the top. ill prob just double it next time and put extra on both layers!
thanks for being my fave new blog!
I neglected to put half the cinnamon and chocolate in the middle of the cake but it’s still tasty (though a bit top-heavy)! I made it in a 12″ round cake pan that’s 2″ deep and it filled it up nicely and baked in 60 minutes at 325 with the convection fan blowing.
I made this Friday night and it was so yummy, the best warm out of the oven or popped in the microwave for a few seconds over the next few days:)
i have been making this for years (passed down from mom) and it is the best cake ever. our family actually makes it often as a birthday cake because everyone loves it so much. nothing better!!