I was wondering what would happen if I substituted sour cream for whole milk in a white cake recipe ? I do realize using it with baking powder will result in a "tang" from the sour cream...that is what I like actually. I have had pretty good success baking King Authurs Elegant white cake recipe, but I find it a bit "flavorless."

I have a chocolate cake and a yellow cake recipe that I use sour cream in. I like to use sour cream because it lasts longer than milk in my fridge, I have it on hand because of the other two recipes, and I like the flavor of it.

I have read two things about this:

1. you need to add 1/3 cup of milk for each cup of sour cream to offset the creaminess of the sour cream.

2. You will need to add some baking soda to counteract the acidity. How much will depend on how much acidity you want in the cake. I have no idea on an amount, but you could start with 1/4 tsp of baking soda and go from there. Should you compensate for taking out 1 tsp of BP for every 1/4 tsp of BS? I don't know. BS acts as a tenderizer in some cake recipes also. Try it with both and see what happens. Sometimes I can analyze to death a recipe, but then it is only by actually baking it up do I find out what really happens.

Both of these came from Bakewise by Shirley Corriher.

oh okay thanks! Maybe that is above my head then! LOL I should just stick to recipes as written since I don't know what I am doing 1/2 the time!

Handy chart of baking substitutions:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/IngredientSubstitution.html

HTH

thanks!