Sour Cream Cake With Peaches

I hate to waste food. Homeless kittens and puppies tug at some people’s heartstrings, but a half cup of soon-to-expire sour cream in the fridge makes me cry. In my zeal to rescue the sour cream, I found myself making this cake at 10 p.m. on a weeknight--and I'm glad I did. 

My inspiration was Orangette’s yogurt cake recipe, in which I subbed sour cream for the yogurt. Dozens of yogurt cake variations have been floating around the blog world ever since Clotilde Dusoulier posted her now-famous recipe for this simple, traditional French dessert.

Yogurt cake is lightly sweet and mild, kind of like pancake batter, so you can add  fruit, or nuts, or chocolate to spice it up. For my cake, I added a couple of sliced, soon-to-be-squishy peaches (it’s not just leftover sour cream that makes me sad).

Sour cream makes the cake super-dense and moist, as does Orangette’s addition of lemon juice syrup that you pour over the baked cake. 

Here’s the recipe with my modifications:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, combine and mix well ½ cup sour cream, ¾ cup sugar, 3 eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla concentrate.  Add 1.5 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder; mix. Add ½ cup canola oil, and mix well.

Dice a couple of medium peaches (or nectarines, or apples, or strawberries, or rhubarb—any tart fruit will work).

Butter a 9-inch cake pan, and pour ½ batter into the pan. Add diced fruit on top, and then pour the rest of the batter to cover the fruit. Sprinkle with raw sugar.

Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool cake completely.

Optional: Juice an orange and a lemon. Add ¼ cup powdered sugar to the juice and mix well. Pour over the entire cake, and serve.