My dad is from the Bronx, and my mom from Queens. Dad’s side of the family were the cooks. When I was growing up, my grandmother was in Florida most of the time, although she’d visit us in New York for the holidays. We’d often have this cake, one that was made for special occasions, because the rest of the time everyone was watching their weight.
Lots of families have their go-to cakes for these kinds of occasion, and this is ours. It’s a high holiday dish, very Jewish. My mother had it for the first time when one of my father’s aunts made it. Mom asked for the recipe and my aunt said: “Only if you marry my nephew.” So she did.
It’s basically a riff on an Ashkenazi eastern European sour cream coffee cake (meaning a cake to have with coffee, not one containing it), with a ton of chocolate chips and cinnamon sugar. I always forget how much of both go in it! It feels like way too much … in a good way. The chocolate chips look like little buttons on a quilt, weighing it down in places.
On the other hand, it’s not as dense as you might expect. I always expect a cake this size to have more butter than it does. It has a lovely, fluffy, whipped egg white texture, and the sour cream gives it a wonderful richness. When I’m making it, I also always forget how crispy the lid gets from the sugar, it turns a really nice brown colour if you don’t cover it with too much foil.
I don’t make it that much on my own, because it’s become something I can rely on my mother to do. It’s sort of a joke between me and my husband – “Is your mom making that cake?” he’ll ask when we’re going to see them, as if he wouldn’t come if she weren’t. I have made it for my children though, and I usually make it to take somewhere else too – we took one to my son’s school this year, they had a Bring a Food From Your Family day.
Food magazines might be known for rolling out the same recipes for apple, pecan and pumpkin pies each year for Thanksgiving, but for us it’s a mixture of traditional things and the desserts the family likes most. In my family, it’s always been this cake of my grandmother’s – and her other special, the noodle kugel.
Chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake
Serves 6-8
115g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
300g granulated sugar
3 large eggs, separated
1½ tsp vanilla extract
375g all-purpose flour
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
450g sour cream
For the filling and topping
340g dark chocolate chips or chocolate bars, coarsely chopped
100g granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Butter a 22x34cm baking tray. If it isn’t nonstick, cover the bottom with a rectangle of baking parchment. Set aside.
2 In a large bowl, cream the butter and the granulated sugar. Beat in the egg yolks and the vanilla extract. Sift the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt together into a separate bowl.
3 Mix in small quantities of sour cream and the dry ingredients into the butter mixture in stages until both are used up and the batter is smooth and very thick. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold these into the batter.
4 For the topping, whisk together the sugar and cinnamon in a small dish.
5 Spread half the cake batter in the bottom of prepared pan. Sprinkle with half the cinnamon-sugar mixture and half the chocolate chips. Dollop the remaining cake batter over the filling in spoonfuls. Use a rubber or offset spatula to gently spread it over the filling and smooth the top. Sprinkle the batter with the remaining cinnamon-sugar and chocolate chips. With the palm of your hand, ever-so-gently press the chocolate chips into the batter a little. No need to submerge them; you just want to make sure they adhere a bit.
6 Bake for 40-50 minutes, rotating halfway through, until a tester inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
- Deb Perelman is author of The Smitten Kitchen and writes on a blog of the same name. @debperelman
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