Reese Witherspoon is well-known for her famous movie performances like Legally Blonde, Wild, and Walk the Line, as well as her incredibly popular clothing and accessories company, Draper James, named after her grandmother Dorothea Draper. But that’s not the only inspiration she has drawn from her grandmother. In her cookbook, Whiskey in a Teacup, Witherspoon also shares her love for her grandmother’s sour cream cake recipe, one of her Southern dessert staples.

The ingredient list for this cake is simple (my favorite type of dessert to make). I knew I had to put this Southern staple to the test, and at first bite I was certainly glad I did. But even as tasty as this cake turned out to be, I do have a few notes on how to make it that much better.

Get the recipe: Reese Witherspoon’s Sour Cream Cake

This cake called for simple, easy-to-find ingredients and the process wasn’t difficult. It produces two very tall cake layers, ideal for a showstopping layer cake. Unfortunately, I was wishing for just a bit more from the praline frosting.

Don’t get me wrong — the flavor of this cake was spot-on. It was moist, with strong notes of vanilla. The flavor of the frosting was sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Boiling the mixture of butter, cream, and brown sugar brought a slight nuttiness to the frosting. However, the recipe didn’t seem to produce enough frosting for my liking. I used a 3/4 cup scoop of frosting for the filling, and then went on to frost the cake. The frosting doesn’t have a fluffy consistency, so it made for a very thin filling in between the layers. Frosting the exterior of the cake was also pretty difficult because of the consistency, and I barely had enough to cover the whole cake. It definitely didn’t result in the showstopping finished dessert I was excited for when I first saw those beautiful, tall layers come out of the oven.

This is still a solid choice for dessert. It’s a great pairing of flavors and textures. However, if I made it again, I would consider increasing the amount of frosting I made by half to get a nice, beautiful pop of praline frosting in between the layers.