Home with my kids today and my five-year-old said she wanted something sweet.  I haven’t baked a sourdough cake in the dutch oven for a while, so I decided to mix it up, figuratively and literally.  Behold the Sourdough Oatmeal Quick Cake; quick to mix (3-5 minutes), an hour to bake.

I started with some sourdough starter that’s been sitting on the shelf for a week.  It was really sour and had a solid layer of liquid on top.  I stirred it up, got out my legless 10″ dutch oven, and went to work.

The Recipe

• 1 stick of butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups sourdough starter
• 2 cups sugar
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1 cup of uncooked (dry) rolled oats
• 2 cups flour
• 1.5 teaspoons baking soda

The Procedure

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Could be hotter if you wanted.
2. Put the stick of butter into the dutch oven and melt.  When melted, pour it into mixing bowl, saving some to grease up the dutch oven.
3. Add other wet ingredients into the mixing bowl.  Mix.
4. Add dry ingredients. Mix.  I use just a spoon to mix all the ingredients.
5. Dump mix into warm, buttery dutch oven.  Put on the lid.  Put it into hot oven.
6. Bake until done.  This one went at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

The center of the one in the picture was a bit wet, kind of like a chunky banana bread, but my kids liked it even more as a result.  The sides and bottom were slightly browned.

Remember that with real sourdough recipes, the amounts of wet and dry are close but can’t be exact because your starter has a variable ratio of liquid to flour.  If you’re new to sourdough, follow the recipe and you’ll be close.  Make it a second time and adjust how much flour you add to get the right consistency.

The Results

My kids loved it.  Mission accomplished.

Scratch baking with sourdough is always fun for me.  Unlike modern baking which is all science, using sourdough is as much art as science.  You have to know when your sourdough is bubbling and what the implications are, and also be OK with the fact that it might not turn out.  But the pleasures and rewards when it does turn out make it that much more enjoyable.