Bird Feed: Super Moist Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Business meetings at 10 am are a baker's dream - scones? muffins? pastries? This week I opted for a coffee cake, but I was going to have to make it the morning of the meeting - and since I'm not particularly fond of waking up at 6 am - I wanted it to be easy to throw together and slide in the oven while I got ready for work.

Enter Paula Deen. Come on, like you're surprised. I had seen her recipe for Spicy Cinnamon Cake in the past - I just couldn't get around using store-bought cake mix. It seemed so... sacrilegious. However, when I learned that the meeting was going to be with some potential partners from down South, I knew Paula was my girl.

Off I headed to the little local grocery store in search of a simple spice cake mix and vanilla pudding - only to discover that it wasn't going to be that simple! I ended up picking up a box of Betty Crocker's Decadent Supreme Cinnamon Swirl cake mix (which I had never seen before) and crossed my fingers. Not like you can really go wrong with something called Decadent Supreme anything...

So here's the recipe from Paula - with a small change on baking time:

1 (18-ounce) package spice cake mix or similar
1 (4 serving) package instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup corn oil
5 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 10-inch tube (I used a bundt) pan. Combine cake mix, instant pudding, sour cream, eggs, and corn oil and beat together well. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. 

Pour half of batter into prepared pan and sprinkle with sugar mixture, reserving a little to sprinkle on top. Pour the rest of batter into pan and sprinkle with the rest of sugar mixture. 

Bake 45-50 minutes. Let cool and remove from pan.

This cake was a dream! I've made sour cream coffee cakes in the past, but the addition of the vanilla pudding mix really seemed to kick the moisture up a notch. I think one sign of a good coffee cake is whether or not people actually have a piece during a meeting - like you just can't help it - and this cake definitely achieved that. 

Thanks, Paula, always happy to bake with a friend!