Breakfast with Ina

I go through these...chef jags, I suppose you could call it.

I pick up Nigel Slater, and we eat nothing but cheese, cream, and butter for a week.

I watch an episode of Nigella Bites, and I'm looking up every recipe attributed to her.

I get the latest Donna Hay magazine, and suddenly we're whipping up fast and gorgeous dishes.

Lately, I've been on an Ina Garten kick.

I adore Ina. I want her to be my Mom. Failing that, I want to make all those simple and lovely dishes she shares with me during BarefootContessa.

This week was back-to-school, which also means back-to-making-breakfast-foods for me.
I'd been paging through one of her books (I'm convinced I own three, Matt thinks it's only two. And that's a comment on our cookbook situation: I have no idea just how many we have, or where they are!), and near the front was a recipe for a Sour Cream Coffee Cake.

Alex, once assured that coffee cakes do not, in fact, contain actual coffee (Alex: 'we don't drink coffee, do we" Me:"No, we don't" Alex: Grandmom and Granddad do" Me: "So does the rest of the world"), warmed up to the idea of this fantastic breakfast food.

Nothing too wild or unusual. This cake, baked in a tube pan, allocates the majority of the crumb topping to be placed between two layers of the batter.
And the batter was dense, and seemed too little. You can see how wonderfully it rose, with nothing more than baking powder & soda to assist.

I'd hoped to include a photo of the cross-section, but I'm still fighting with Blogger. Most photos just won't load (oh, they claim to be there, but in fact, aren't), and some are actually disappearing once I've posted. Quite frustrating.



Tagged
with: Food and Drink + Baking + Coffee + Cake + Ina Garten + Sour Cream + Barefoot Contessa