Sour Cream Pound Cake

Whenever we go to Whole Foods, we pick up lactose-free sour cream (and now cream cheese!) by Green Valley Organics. It’s such a treat to be able to eat those again, and I’m still not quite used to it. So it recently occurred to me that I should make a cake that calls for a lot of sour cream, since that is the kind of thing I can make now! This recipe is from The Kitchn, and it is a delicious sour cream pound cake, if I do say so myself! You could replace the sour cream with lactose-free Greek yogurt (or strained lactose-free plain yogurt) and still get a nice tang from it. I’ve changed the ingredients slightly because I don’t keep cake flour or pastry flour on hand, so I used a mix of all-purpose white flour and corn starch. (Note that to measure it, I found it easier to place a bowl on the scale and tare it, then put in the corn starch and top it up with flour until the whole thing reached 360 g.) This cake was dense like a pound cake ought to be, and was very pleasant to eat. We give it three thumbs up!

2 ½ cups + 2 Tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for flouring the pan
6 Tbsp. corn starch
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened (I used cold vegan margarine)
2 ½ cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 tsp. of vanilla extract
1 cup (8 oz.) lactose-free sour cream

Preheat the oven to 325 °F. Grease a bundt pan, being sure to get into all the nooks and crannies. Sprinkle in a few spoonfuls of flour and tap the pan to distribute. Tap out excess flour.

In a small bowl, whisk the flour, corn starch, salt and baking soda. (I find that this is sufficient and I don’t have to sift the flour beforehand.) Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the mixer running on low, add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition and scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and mix again.

Sift half of the flour over the butter and egg mixture, and fold in with a spatula. Add the sour cream and continue to fold gently. Sift the remaining flour over the batter and fold until all the flour has been incorporated.

Gently pour the batter into the prepared pan and tap the pan softly against the counter to remove air bubbles. Bake for 60 minutes and check the cake. The cake is done with the top is deep golden-brown and a skewer or paring knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. If batter or wet crumbs cling to the blade, continue baking. Check every 5 minutes until the cake is done.

When the tester comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven and place the pan on a rack to cool for 10 minutes (I always leave it longer). Invert the cake onto the rack and wiggle the pan gently until it lifts off of the cake. Allow the cake to cool for another hour.