Archive for: Coffee Cake
My lemon trees are nearly falling over with fruit right now, since we are in the peak of citrus season. Fresh citrus always gives me lots of inspiration in the kitchen, because a little bit of juice or zest can really perk up a dish. This Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake is just one of my most recent ways to put some of those lemons to good use. The lemony cake packs a double dose of lemon for citrus-lovers. It has both fresh lemon juice and lemon zest in the cake batter, and more lemon juice and zest in the streusel topping.
The cake is has a lovely lemon flavor to it, with a hint of butter from the buttermilk that is also in the cake batter. It isn’t as strong a lemon flavor as you might get from a batch of lemon curd, but it is more than enough to make the cake taste like springtime. The hint of lemon in the crispy streusel topping is a nice finishing touch to the cake – and a very nice change of pace from more common cinnamon streusel-topped cakes.
I used meyer lemons in this cake, which are less acidic than your average lemons are. This means that they are less sour, but still have a strong lemon flavor. You can substitute regular lemons into this recipe without changing anything – you will still get a bright lemon flavor and the cake will still be sweet enough. I highly recommend sticking with fresh lemon juice and zest, rather than bottled juice, for the best flavor, though. Also, to get the most out of your lemons, be sure to zest them before juicing them, as it is a little more difficult to get a microplane across the skin of a lemon that has already been juiced!
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A fluffy cinnamon bun that is packed with a sweet, buttery filling and topped off with just the right amount of sticky glaze is a breakfast treat that is just about irresistible. Cinnamon buns can be a lot of work to make, however, since you need to prepared a yeast dough and there are several steps that include rolling and re-rolling the dough just to shape them. This Cinnamon Bun Bread recipe is one of my favorite twists on a cinnamon bun because you get all the same flavors as you find in a traditional bun – but without any of that work.
This Banana Cinnamon Bun Coffee Cake is a twist on that basic bread that includes a little bit of banana to give the dough a little more flavor and make the coffee cake a little more unique – while keeping that cinnamon bun-inspired tastiness. The dough is an easy to make yeast dough that includes mashed banana, cinnamon and ground nutmeg. It doesn’t have to be kneaded once it is all mixed together, just poured into a prepared pan and left to rise while you prepare the topping mixture.
The topping is a mixture of butter, cinnamon, flour and spices, with a pinch of salt added just for contrast. It looks very much like the crumble mixture that you might put on top of a classic coffee cake. In this recipe, however, it is swirled and folded into the yeast dough to spread that sweetness throughout the coffee cake and make sure every bite has some cinnamon flavor. I always make sure that a little extra is sprinkled on top before baking, too.
The finished bread has a light, tender texture and that combination of butter and cinnamon that we always associate with cinnamon buns. The nutmeg and banana come through, as well, but are a little more subtle in the presence of that cinnamon and brown sugar topping. The bread is great on its own and can also be finished with a little drizzle of glaze (the recipe is given below, although I did not glaze this slice of cake) to give it the right amount of stickiness. I serve this both for breakfast and dessert, and since it is a no-knead yeast recipe, I find that it can fit into my schedule any time of day.
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Coffee cakes typically get their name from the fact that they are served with coffee, not because they have coffee in them. This Coffee Swirl Coffee Cake is an exception to that rule because it not only goes with coffee, but it has coffee baked right into it! This is a bundt cake that looks similar to many other bundt-style coffee cakes, but delivers a beautiful coffee swirl at its center, rather than the cinnamon-sugar or streusel centers that are so much more common. For a coffee lover, this cake could easily become a brunch favorite.
The base for this cake is a very moist vanilla cake made with plain greek yogurt. The Greek yogurt really helps keep the cake moist, and gives it a nice neutral flavor that the vanilla can really stand out against. You can actually use either nonfat or full fat greek yogurt and get a good result both ways, but you can also substitute sour cream into this recipe too for a similar effect. The light-colored cake is sweet enough to balance out the strong flavor of the coffee that you get in the dramatic, dark swirl in the center of the cake.
For the coffee swirl, I recommend using a strong instant espresso or Starbucks Via for the mixture to give it a really distinct coffee flavor. You want that coffee to really stand out, and the vanilla cake can handle the contrast. You can use instant coffee instead for a milder flavor. A hint of cocoa powder brings out some of the cocoa notes in the coffee, which keeps it from seeming too intense, too. The coffee swirl mixture is dry and crumbly, so be sure that it gets surrounded by cake batter when you incorporate it into the cake. It will form a kind of swirl as the cake bakes, and create a beautiful finished look with minimal effort from you.
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Biscoff spread – the addictive brown sugar cookie spread with the consistency of peanut butter – is popping up more and more places these days, and as it gets more popular, I’m looking out for more opportunities to use it up. It’s delicious spread on toast, of course, but it also makes a tasty batch of cookies and a delicious topping for cupcakes. It is also an excellent filling for a coffee cake, as I found when putting together this Biscoff Swirl Coffee Cake.
The coffee cake is a simple vanilla cake batter with a swirl of Biscoff-laden filling and a cinnamon yogurt topping. The idea for the topping came from a 1965 Pilsbury cookbook I have, which had a sour cream topping baked onto a cake. Thick, greek-style yogurt makes a great topping (which stays very soft, almost like a frosting) for this cake because it adds a slight tang to the cake and breaks up some of the sweetness of the biscoff. The cake is moist and very tender, and the three different layers – topping, cake and filling – make this cake a little more interesting than you average coffee cake!
When you are layering the batter and filling of this coffee cake in your baking pan, you’ll notice that the layers of this cake are fairly thin. This means that you need to take your time and spread your batter carefully so that you have an even layer of Biscoff filling throughout. Spread the Biscoff and the cake batter as you would spread a frosting on a cake: start at the center and pull towards the outside, and don’t spread the same spot over and over, or you’ll mix the layers. A small offset spatula makes it much easier to spread the batter, but be patient and a regular spatula will do the trick, too. It’s worth the effort of layering the batters because the finished cake looks irresistible with that perfect Biscoff swirl running through it.
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A basic cinnamon streusel is a classic topping for coffee cake, but coffee cakes, like muffins, are things that can easily be transformed by the addition of a few flavorful extra ingredients. There is no cinnamon in sight in this Cranberry Nut Coffee Cake, but there are lots of crunchy pecans, sweet-tart dried cranberries and a brown sugar streusel – all of which will make you reach for seconds even before you’ve finished your first piece.
The cake has a soft, buttery crumb and a texture that is almost like pound cake. It is dense enough to hold up the streusel layer and support all the dried cranberries packed into the batter, but it is still very tender. Instead of using buttermilk or milk as the liquid in this cake, I used sour cream to enrich it. Both full fat and low fat sour cream will give you good results, and having the lower fat option allows you to lighten up the coffee cake a little bit if you want to.
I like dried cranberries for this coffee cake. They’re sweet, tart and available year round, while fresh and even frozen cranberries can be very difficult to find if you want to bake this cake in the spring. Fresh and frozen cranberries can be chopped up and added to the coffee cake batter to add an even brighter cranberry flavor. Another flavor variation I like to use in this cake is to add some orange zest to the batter, as oranges and cranberries are an excellent pairing.
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