Honestly, I’m a much better poet than a baker. I like to eyeball ingredients, and you can’t really do that with a precise science like baking. But I’ve been making this sour cream coffee cake for 15 years and have never grown tired of it. Enjoy!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

8 ounces sour cream (1 cup)

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

2 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Preparation:

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar, and sour cream; add eggs and vanilla and beat well. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add the creamed mixture; beat well. Generously grease a 10-inch tube pan. Make topping by combining chopped nuts, sugar, and cinnamon. In bottom of the pan, put about 1/3 of topping mixture; alternate layers of batter and topping, ending with batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry; the winning chapbook, Strange Furniture, is out with Neon Hemlock Press. She is a back-to-back finalist for the Glass Chapbook Series and back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She was named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, is out now with Cephalopress. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile.

Read Lannie’s poem “Victim #4, or That’s an Inventive Way to Store an Axe” in Swwim.