Club: BAKED: Sunday Night Cake

This is the latest installment of Club: BAKED. This week is hosted by Julie at Little Bit of Everything. I love this simple, subtle cake.


I like the simple list of ingredients. I like the subtle tartness added by the sour cream. I like the subtle cinnamon. I was tempted to really increase the cinnamon, but I'm glad that I stayed true to the recipe. Cakes don't need to be showstoppers. As the name implies, this is an everyday kind of cake. Not too sweet, not too heavy. This cake's simplicity reminded me of smittenkitchen's Everyday Chocolate Cake which (if my memory is correct) uses only one bowl.


I sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on the batter before I baked it. I used a 9" springform pan. I started checking the cake at 35 minutes, but it continued to bake for about 15 minutes more for a total of 50 minutes. You can actually see all the holes I poked while trying to make sure it baked all the way through. Even though the frosting sounded dreamy, I skipped it because it seemed too heavy for a mid-August treat.

I was surprised that the recipe did not include vanilla. It seems like all recipes contain vanilla! I did not miss it as we eagerly cut the cake while it was still cooling on the rack which explains the crumbles. This cake seems infinitely adaptable. It also reminded me of Mark Bittman's Olive Oil Cake (p. 852 in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian). Maybe leave out the cinnamon and add lemon or lime zest with vanilla? Or pump up the spice by adding cardamon or ginger or cloves with an orange glaze?

I mark each week's recipe with my pink dino bookmark. I read through the recipe several times before I bake it. Stella tries to re-claim the pink dino, but I always manage to keep it. This time it was super easy because I distracted her with cake!