Awesome sour cream apple cake

It's good to be back ^^! Well, it's not like I've been away or not been baking at all.. just that I haven't baked anything interesting or new lately.

I'm not sure the reason for my lack of inspiration.. but something finally caught my eye today..  a sour cream coffee cake. No, there's no coffee involved here, just a cake that goes really well with coffee that's all. That's why I dropped the "coffee" part, lest you take it literally like I did (^^||)

As usual, after comparing recipes online, I ended up adapting from the pioneer woman, eatlivetravelwrite and one of my favorite bloggers, smitten kitchen, from which the insipiration came from. Do check out their wonderful recipes, but consider reducing the sugar (^^).

Sour cream apple cake (my reduced sugar and fat version)

115g unsalted butter
125g sugar (reduced from original recipe of 1 cup/200g sugar!!!)
2 eggs, separate yolk and whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream (I topped up with 50ml fresh milk as my sour cream tub came in 200ml)
250g self-raising flour
a pinch of salt

Apple topping

50g brown sugar (reduced from original recipe of 1 cup/200g sugar!!!)
50g flour
1 tsp cinnamon (feel free to use a bit more)
1 cup walnuts, chopped (I used just a handful, cos that's all I had ^^)
50g unsalted butter (1 stick = 113g was suggested, but I highly recommend reducing!)
2 cups diced apples (2 apples would be about right)

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Makes about 18 cupcakes or an 8 inch round/square cake or whatever tin you fancy.

2. Cream butter and 75g sugar till light and fluffy. Add egg yolks and mix till well combined. Mix in vanilla extract and sour cream next. Then fold in sifted flour into mixture.

3. Beat egg whites with the rest of the sugar (50g) till stiff. Gently fold this into cake mixture. (I added this step as this produces light, beautiful texture cakes)

4. Prepare apple topping by combining all dry ingredients and diced apples. (If you want a crumble-like topping, make sure you mix flour, cinnamon, butter and sugar together first into crumbs.. then add in walnuts and apples. I didn't, hence the goeey topping ^^)

5. To prepare cake, pour some cake mixture into the baking tin/s, followed by some apple topping mixture. Add the rest of the cake mixture and cover the cake with the apple topping mixture.

6. Bake 25-30 minutes for cupcakes and 55-60 minutes in a cake tin, or when a tester comes out clean.

This turned out to be a truly beautiful bake! The texture was perfect! Nicely light, springy-bouncy and oh-so smooth and moist! Almost like the moist blueberry cream cheese butter cake I made before.

I'm so glad I got the sugars right too. Not too sweet, just nice! I like that I could taste the natural sweetness of the apples. This is so delicious! (^^)

Chubby pig says it's all.. "AWESOME"!