Sour Cream-Blueberry Crumb Cake

Since it's just me here, I tend not to make cakes or other big desserts for myself. I feel silly making a big cake that I don't even eat 1/4 of before it starts going stale. However, every once in a while, I get an urge to bake something sweet, like this evening after Battlestar Galactica. My main restriction: I only had one egg on hand.

As a member of one of those mail-order book clubs for cookbooks, I got an unexpected copy of The Cake Book by Tish Boyle last month after forgetting to decline it as a featured selection. I decided to keep it, since I have plenty of bread-baking books, but no cake-baking ones.

So, I opened it up this evening, hoping to find a low-on-eggs recipe. The one I settled on was a Sour Cream-Blueberry Crumb Cake, which called for two eggs. However, since it calls for a 9"x9" square pan, I theorized that maybe I could halve the recipe and bake it in a 9"x5" loaf pan. I'd be able to make do with the one egg I had, and end up with a nice half-size cake better suited to just me. The results?


A moist, tender cake, with a slight tanginess from the sour cream, punctuated with fruity bursts of flavor from the blueberries. The crumb topping is crunchy and buttery... in short, I'm very happy with it.

Since this recipe was straight out of a book with no variations from me, I don't think I can legitimately post it. However, I can pass along the tip of the day: if you have a recipe for a cake for a 9"x9" pan, you should be able to halve it and bake it in a 9"x5" pan with no ill effects (although I wouldn't try it with a yeast-based cake). It's a nice size for a small gathering of 2 or 4 people.

There are many other cake recipes in this book that I would love to try out, either just on myself or on unsuspecting coworkers (the Library of Congress has the full recipe list available here). The recipes here aren't exactly low-maintenance, but if they come out as well as this one did, I'm willing to put in a little extra work.

Technorati tags: Baking, cake, cooking, crumb cake