I made a coffee cake! It has been a long, hot summer. The heat finally broke with a big rain storm last week and I was struck with the mood to bake. I browsed Grandma Clarke’s recipe box for something simple and sweet. Coffee cake was the perfect answer!

The recipe that I found is for a sour cream coffee cake. One of the ingredients is a cup of sour cream mixed with some baking soda, which activates the baking soda and fizzes like a little science experiment! Very cute.

A word of warning: I can’t vouch for the actual baking time on this recipe! My oven typically runs hot, so I’ll shave off a few minutes from Grandma’s suggested time or bake to the lowest time in a provided range. This recipe suggests 40-45 minutes, so I baked my cake for 40 minutes. I let it cool, cut off a slice from the end for my little photoshoot… and it wasn’t until I cut deeper into the loaf later that I found a gooey center!

If you try this recipe, please let me know how it turns out for you. I’d love to be able to update this post with more data!

Coffee Cake

Topping

• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup chopped nuts (optional)
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Mix ingredients together in a small bowl
Set aside

Batter

• 1 cup white sugar
• ¼ cup margarine
• 2 eggs
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 cup sour cream with 1 cup baking soda added to it

Cream together white sugar and margarine
Add 2 eggs and mix well
Stir in sour cream and 1 tsp baking soda (mixture)
Mix baking powder in the flour and stir into above mixture
Pour half the mixture into bottom of a (greased) loaf pan
Sprinkle half of the sugar mixture (topping) over this
Add rest of batter, then rest of sugar mixture

Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes
[Editor’s note: I recommend longer! I’ll be baking mine for 50 minutes next time.]

Some overripe bananas were looking sad and lonely on my kitchen counter the other day, so naturally I made them into a banana bread!

I love tea breads because they bake like a cake: no yeast, no rising or proofing, no problem. A tea bread is basically a big muffin! It has a longer bake time, of course, but the ingredients are the same. You can convert any muffin recipe into a bread or vice versa by adjusting the bake time.

Grandma Clarke’s recipes are always charming, but something about this one really makes me smile! I love how she is incredibly detailed — spelling out “teaspoons” as whole words and identifying that it “Makes 1 loaf” — but then she closes with an instruction to bake “until done.” Oh, Grandma!

Banana Tea Bread

• 1¾ cup sifted flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅓ cup shortening
• ⅔ cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, well-beaten
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 or 3 bananas)
• ½ cup chopped nuts [optional]

Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt.
[optional] Add ½ cup chopped nuts to flour mixture.
Beat shortening until creamy in mixing bowl.
Add sugar gradually and continue beating until light and fluffy.
Add eggs and beat well.
Add flour mixture alternately with bananas, a small amount at a time, beating after each addition until smooth.
Turn into a well-greased bread pan (8 ½” x 4 ½” x 3″).
Bake in a 350°F oven for about 1 hour 10 minutes or until bread is done.
Makes 1 loaf.