Mary Helen’s Mother’s Coffee Cake

More years ago than I care to count, my oldest child, Colin, was enrolled in the wonderful and now long-gone TCU pre-school program. There was to be a parents’ program, and we were all assigned recipes, so that some brought the same entrée, others brought the same dessert. Mary Helen was one of Colin’s classmates, and I drew her mother’s recipe for coffee cake.

It turned out to be a Bundt cake, and I had never made one before. If you are of my generation though, you will remember all those cake recipes that incorporated box cake mix and pudding mix. This  was one of the best of those. I dutifully bought cake mix, pudding mix, and a Bundt pan. I’d been baking successfully since my early teens, so I had no qualms as I sailed into this fairly simple and straightforward recipe. After it came out of the oven, I let it sit on the counter to cool. When I took it out, half came out and half the cake stayed in the pan! Disaster!

I called a friend to moan about my bad luck, and she just laughed. But then she told me to let it cool no more than five minutes and then promptly take it out of the pan. I went to the store, bought the ingredients again, and made a cake that turned out fine. Ever after, Mary Helen’s father called me “the two-cake lady.”

But that recipe turned out to be a staple in our family, the kids favorite and something I always served at my annual tree trimming party. You can do it in as many flavors as you can find the necessary mixes—lemon and vanilla come to mind, but I did know a woman who made a strawberry version. We stuck to chocolate.

At the holiday season, this is great to have on hand for surprise guests or to give as a gift to a neighbor. I made the cake pictured above for a neighbor, but Jordan gets credit for its picture-perfect appearance. A Bundt pan is too tall for my toast oven, and even if I could squeeze it in, the cake would undoubtedly rise to burn on the coils. So after I assembled it, Jordan baked it in her oven and was therefore cautioned about taking it out of the pan correctly. I think she was a bit insulted that I thought she needed that instruction, because she frequently makes Bundt cakes of several types, including a wine cake. At any rate, we were both proud of the product, and she delivered it to a neighbor with four children.

Mary Helen’s Mother’s Coffee Cake

1 box cake mix

1 box instant pudding

½ c. oil

4 eggs

1½ c. sour cream

Sugar and cinnamon

Mix together everything but sugar and cinnamon. Grease Bundt pan with butter or solid shortening, being sure to get every bit of the surface. Mix equal parts of cinnamon and sugar (about tsp. each) and sprinkle on all sides of prepared pan. Add the batter, evening it out as much as possible (it’s a thick batter), and top with cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 350° for 50 to60 minutes (check with a long kebab skewer or something similar); it often must cook longer. Cool five minutes and remove from the pan. DON’T WAIT ANY LONGER. Run a knife around edges of pan and tunnel in the middle, and then top with a plate, invert, and gently shake to remove the cake from the pan.
You can drizzle icing over it if you want, but I consider that gilding the lily.