Lin's Famous Chocolate Chip Cake

This chocolate chip cake is built on sour cream, which gives it a dense, velvety crumb that stays moist for days. The batter is straightforward: cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, fold in the dry ingredients and sour cream, then stir in three-quarters of a 12-ounce bag of chocolate chips. The rest get scattered on top.

Baking in an angel food (tube) pan is the right call here. The center tube conducts heat into the middle of this heavy, chip-laden batter, so the inside cooks through before the outside overbakes. A standard cake pan would leave you with a raw center or burnt edges.

The sour cream does double duty. Its fat keeps the crumb tender, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda for a reliable rise in a batter weighed down by all those chips. Every slice cuts through pockets of melted chocolate surrounded by buttery, golden cake.

Pro Tips

• Make sure the butter is fully softened before creaming. Cold butter won’t aerate properly, and you’ll get a flat, dense cake instead of a tender one.
• Beat the batter for a full few minutes after adding all ingredients (except chips). That extra beating develops the structure the cake needs to support the weight of the chocolate.
• Grease the tube pan thoroughly, especially the center tube and the ridges if it’s a bundt pan. Sour cream cakes stick stubbornly.
• Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes before turning out. Too soon and it breaks; too long and it steams and gets gummy.

Variations

• Use half semi-sweet and half white chocolate chips for a marbled effect.
• Add a teaspoon of espresso powder to the batter to deepen the chocolate flavor.
• Dust the cooled cake with powdered sugar or drizzle with a simple chocolate ganache.