Sometimes a really simple cake is best, and that is usually how I classify a coffee cake. Even though they generally have a streusel or crumb topping, the cakes don’t need any frosting and never require the same time commitment that a layer cake does. It is also nice that coffee cake lends itself to many different flavor variations, so no matter how simple, it is never boring.

This coffee cake is a plain vanilla buttermilk cake with chocolate chips mixed into the batter and topped with cinnamon streusel. It straddles the line between a breakfast cake and a dessert cake for two reasons. First, the chocolate is a desserty addition because coffee cakes often stick with fruit - blueberries, strawberries, etc. - as a mix-in. Second, the texture of this cake is quite rich. It has a tight, tender crumb, and almost seems to melt into your mouth as you eat it. The vanilla comes through in the finished cake, but you also taste the richness of the butter and buttermilk in the batter. The streusel topping, which is also buttery, contributes to this.

Speaking of the topping, this is not the kind of cake that has an extra-thick layer of crumb topping. The streusel mix just about cover the top, adding a bit of extra sweetness and some great texture to the cake. Even though I’m a big fan of topping on coffee cakes, I think that this amount of streusel was just right for this particular cake.

You can use any 9-inch round cake pan for this coffee cake. The cake can be cooled right in the pan and served from it, so there is no need to worry about trying to pry it out of the pan before you slice it. That said, it’s nice to use a springform pan if you have one because it gives you the ability to remove the sides of the pan - making it that much easier to slice and serve.

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Whenever I bake or serve an apple pie and my grandmother is around, she always tries to convince me to put cheese on top of it. Cheese - especially cheddar cheese - and apples are a great combination general, so even though it might sound like an odd pairing as far as pie goes, the salty flavor of the cheese goes pretty well with the sweet apple filling of the pie.

That being said, I always just gave my grandmother a slice of cheese to eat alongside her pie and kept mine cheese-free. I simply like pie crust too much to adulterate it by letting cheddar cheese melt all over the top. I’m open to using the cheddar cheese and apple match in other foods, so I opted to include a cheddar cheese layer on top of this apple pie-inspired coffee cake.

The coffee cake has a base of vanilla cake that is topped off with some apples cooked into a kind of homemade apple pie filling. The cake base is tender and has a good flavor, with an almost pound cake-like density that supports all the layers of topping extremely well. The apples are not fully cooked before they are added as a layer to the cake, but getting them started on the stove ensures that they will be fully cooked and tender when the cake is done. It also gave me the opportunity to add some cornstarch to the apples and thicken up their natural juices, preventing them from making the base of the cake soggy. The coffee cake is finished with a crumbly oat topping and, of course, cheddar cheese. The cheese should be added just before the cake comes out of the oven so it has just enough time to melt onto the streusel topping and hold everything together.

If you want to leave the cheese off of this coffee cake, go right ahead. The cheese is a nice change and does go well with apples, but I have to admit that I just can’t help liking the cake (not to mention my apple pie) just as much without the cheese on top. If you leave the topping off, consider serving the cake with a little whipped cream or ice cream to finish it off. (more…)

A good streusel topping is hard to resist. It’s one of the things that makes coffee cakes so popular, and can turn a good muffin into a great one - or at least turn it into one that looks a little more decadent. I’m sure that this is what IHOP was banking on when they introduced some “limited time only” Coffee Cake Pancakes to their menu. The pancakes look delicious on their posters, with layers of pancakes, streusel and whipped cream. As tempted as I was to pull my car over when I spotted a nearby IHOP, I decided to drive on home and put together a completely homemade batch of coffee cake pancakes.

I assumed that IHOP probably used their standard pancake batter for their pancakes, so I set out to base my recipe around the buttermilk pancakes that I usually make. The IHOP pancakes have streusel on top of the pancakes, as well as in the pancakes themselves, so I knew that I would have to make a batch of streusel and bake it off in advance. I modified a streusel that tops one of my favorite coffee cakes, crumbled it onto a baking sheet and baked it in the oven until it was crisp

To make the pancakes, I used a 1/3 cup measure to dollop large amounts of batter onto my griddle, spread the pancake batter (it is fairly thick) gently into circles, and sprinkled some of the pre-baked streusel topping onto the un-cooked side of the pancake. This allows the streusel the chance to cook into the pancake, not just slide off the top. I served these with maple syrup and more streusel topping, leaving the whipped cream to the IHOP version.

The pancakes were soft and fluffy, with a delicious buttermilk-vanilla flavor. The streusel added a fantastic texture and flavor to the pancakes: crunchy, sweet and buttery. It was almost like crumbling up shortbread cookies and sprinkling them into the batter, but probably better because of the spices in the streusel. The pancakes are quite filling - not to mention indulgent - so I would save these for a lazy weekend morning. The streusel can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container if you want to bake it ahead of time and have it on hand.

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Crisps and cobblers are fairly common fruit desserts and, when you hear either one mentioned you probably have a clear idea of what to expect. Buckles fall into the same general category, but get a lot more questioning looks when mentioned than some other fruity desserts. A “buckle” is a fruit-laden cake that gets its name from the fact that the added moisture from all the fruit can actually cause the cake to “buckle” a bit in the center. While cake batter is what gives the cake substance and structure, the dessert should have a very high fruit content. Buckles also often have a slightly crispy topping of sugar or a thin layer of streusel.

Sill loaded with fresh blueberries after making my bluberry tart, juicy blueberries were my fruit of choice for this buckle. Fresh or frozen will work equally well here. The only thing to look out for with frozen berries is that you might need an extra minute or two of baking time since there are quite a lot included in the batter and, as a result, it will go into the oven quite cold.

I also opted to give this a healthier twist by using some whole wheat flour in the batter. The slightly nutty flavor of the whole grain goes quite well with the blueberries, and the tender/grainy texture that can sometimes be associated with whole grain flour works well in a dessert that should be tender and fruit-filled anyway. Still, I did use part all purpose flour in my batter to balance everything out. If you have white whole wheat flour, you can use that in place of the whole wheat-all purpose combination that I used. I also used all purpose in the streusel topping. Whole where will work there, as well.

Everything came together well, a good balance of fruit and enough batter to hold it together and make it slice-able. It had a good whole grain flavor, but still had a light texture. The buckle isn’t too sweet, thanks to the very slight natural tartness of the blueberries - and I have to admit that I love how many berries are in this dessert. This is a good dessert when it is served warm with ice cream, but makes a great coffee cake, as well.

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This is definitely a cake for all the peanut butter lovers out there. The cake itself is sweet, lightly spiced and moist - and it doesn’t have a speck of peanut butter in it. The crumble topping, on the other hand, is made up almost entirely of peanut butter, with just a few additional ingredients to sweeten it up and give it a better texture when it bakes onto the cake. The topping is delicious and addictive if, as I said, you like peanut butter, but even if it’s not your favorite cake topping the fact that the cake doesn’t have any peanut butter in it at all gives this cake a great balance.

I believe this recipe originally came from an issue of Sunset, Good Housekeeping or some similar publication from about 2 decades ago. I have it hand-written and the details of exactly where it came from are fuzzy, although the other recipe cards it was with largely contained recipes from those two publications at around that time. In the event you happen to know the issue, let me know in the comments! Anyway, I must have saved the recipe because it seemed easy to make and quite original.

I like peanut butter, but it can be a bit overwhelming in some recipes, so I really like the way that it’s only incorporated into the topping here. The topping is not like a streusel topping, although it may look like it. It is more like a cross between the inside of a peanut butter cup and a streusel topping: rich and peanut buttery, but just dry enough to crumble and melt into your mouth. There is a bit of crunch in the topping from the nuts in the chunky peanut butter. I used an organic/natural brand (salted), but this will work out with one of the national brands, as well. I highly recommend opting for chunky peanut butter for the additional texture.

The final element in this dish is the raisins in the cake. They’re moist and sweet, just sweet enough to take the edge off of the rich peanut butter topping. I liked them a lot more than I thought I would, but if you really don’t like raisins, you can substitute chocolate chips or omit them entirely. Serve the cake plain, or with a little bit of jab to go for that PB&J effect.

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 Is it necessary for a coffee cake to have some kind of streusel or crumb topping to be called coffee cake? I tend to think not, but with the exception of coffee cakes that are baked in bundt pans (and often have a layer of streusel running through them), it generally seems to be true. Untopped cakes can easily fall out of the coffee cake category and into some other class of cake. But regardless of whether crumb toppings are necessary, they are certainly delicious and it never hurts to have a generous amount of top of a coffee cake.

In this recipe, the cake itself has a tender, moist crumb thanks to the presence of sour cream in the batter. It features the well-balanced flavors of vanilla and butter, both of which complement coffee excellently. I topped it off with a large portion of crumb topping, which I clumped together as I sprinkled it onto the cake batter in an effort to ensure that every piece of cake had an equal - and large - amount of the topping. If the cake were baked with just these two elements, it would be a fairly standard, classic crumb cake. But I wanted to take it a step further and add an additional flavor: strawberry jam.

I chose a jam (from Trader Joe’s, if you’re curious) with large chunks of strawberries and spooned it onto the unbaked sour cream cake batter once I had spread it into the baking pan. I gently swirled some of it into the batter, being careful not to over mix and turn my swirl into strawberry cake batter. The crumbs went on top of the jam. I recommend lining the cake pan with aluminum foil to ensure that you can lift out the cake without too much of the crumb topping falling off when you go to serve it.

Once baked, the result was amazing. The cake was even moister and sweeter with the presence of the jam, and the chunks of fruit in the preserves lent a fantastic, colorful look to the cake. While it is on the sweet side, when served with a strong coffee the flavors balance out perfectly. Heck - even if you serve it with rich hot chocolate, I suspect people will be going back for seconds.

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