Archive for: Coffee Cake
This Lemon Blackberry Coffee Cake is another recipe that takes advantage of fresh, summertime berries. I, obviously, used blackberries in this case. Blueberries are definitely more popular for muffins and coffee cakes than blackberries are, since they tend to hold their shape and not “bleed” too much juice into a baked good. But there are advantages to using bigger, juicer berries: the fresh blackberries give this coffee cake an almost cobbler-like feel to it – which makes this one coffee cake that is just as good for dessert as it is for breakfast. You can use frozen berries, tossing them in a teaspoon or two of flour before stirring them into the batter, but if you can get fresh berries you’re going to get the best results.
The cake batter itself is moist and buttery, enriched with both butter and buttermilk for a very flavorful base for the blueberries. Lemon zest is creamed into the butter and sugar, which releases even more of the potent lemon oil from the zest as it rubs against the coarse sugar. The lemon flavor does not dominate the cake, however, which allows the berries, buttermilk, vanilla and other elements of the cake to stand out without being overshadowed by tangy lemon.
Like so many other coffee cakes, this one is topped with streusel. To complement the lemon in the buttermilk coffee cake batter, I added some lemon zest to the streusel as well. The streusel doesn’t have a strong lemon flavor, but you can clearly taste the extra lemon when you’re eating the cake and that gives it a nice brightness, as well as adding a sweet and crunchy topping to the moist cake.
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School lunches these days aren’t typically anything to write home about, although there are plenty of chefs, parents, students and other activists out there trying to change school lunches to be healthier, fresher and tastier. But school lunches weren’t always something to dread. In fact, they used to be downright tasty – even in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the biggest school district in California and the second largest in the country. I can’t say that I remember them being particularly good back when I was a student, but judging from this Sour Cream Coffee Cake that was served in Los Angeles schools back in 1959, I am positive that it was at some point in time.
This coffee cake is excellent. A great balance of moist vanilla cake and sweet brown sugar and walnut filling. The recipe is easy to make, beautiful to serve and more than satisfying to eat – and it probably goes just as well with a carton of milk as it does with my coffee. The cake is baked in a tube pan, and gets a layer of filling in between layers of cake, as well as a generous portion of the filling mixture on top. The recipe has been published a couple of times, and this version was printed in the LA Times several years back along with several other classic LAUSD recipes.
The cake uses a blend of cake flour and all purpose flour, to give it a light and soft texture. I definitely recommend using the two types of flour (if you have pastry flour, you can substitute that for both flours) or use less all purpose flour to substitute for cake flour (see this post for details). The filling doesn’t have any spices added to it, so it gives you a excellent butter and brown sugar flavor in the finished cake. You can, however, spice it up by adding cinnamon or any other spice you like to the filling mixture. The filling also includes a fair amount of walnuts, which have a rich, buttery texture that works well in the coffee cake. Pecans would make a good alternative if you want something besides walnuts.
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Sometimes, the best part of a coffee cake is the crumble topping that sits on top of it. Other times, the cake itself is so tasty that the coffee cake actually needs no topping at all to be good. I would put this Blueberry and White Chocolate Coffee Cake into the latter category. It is a moist, tender and flavorful cake that, despite the fact that it has only a sprinkle of sugar to top it off, is definitely the perfect accompaniment to a good cup of coffee.
This cake includes fresh blueberries and white chocolate chips, which pair together very well. The sweetness of the berries is only enhanced by the sweet vanilla flavor of the white chocolate. You can use fresh or frozen berries in this coffee cake, but prefer to use fresh berries because they don’t “bleed” into the cake as defrosting, frozen berries do, resulting in a much prettier finished product. If you do use frozen, simply toss the still-frozen berries in about a tablespoon of flour before folding them into the batter to minimize the purple “bleed” of the berry juice.
The finished cake is sweet, with a great combination of almond, vanilla and buttermilk flavors in the batter, setting off the bright blueberries scattered throughout. The white chocolate chips (or use chopped up chunks of your favorite good-quality white chocolate) almost melt into the cake, adding another layer of creamy vanilla flavor. A sprinkle of sugar on top of the cake gives it a slightly crisp crust, rather than adding more sweetness to it. The cake keeps extremely well when stored in an airtight container, so it can be made a day before you intend to serve if you you’re planning to bring it out for brunch. Don’t forget the coffee!
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Coffee cake is a moist, tender cake that is usually topped with some kind of streusel topping and served alongside coffee or tea at breakfast. Coffee cakes stand apart from other cakes because of their streusel topping and because, although they might have a little glaze drizzled on top, they are not frosted. Some have a swirl of streusel in them, and others are filled with fruit, nuts or chocolate. in A coffee cake might have coffee in it, but the name comes from the fact that it is served with coffee, not because it has coffee in it.
I probably get more questions about coffee cake than any other type of cake. The name is a bit confusing, if coffee cake isn’t something that is common in your area. It’s a very American kind of cake and you don’t see it many other places in the world, unless you do a lot of baking or go into a shop that specializes in American baked goods. If you do live somewhere where coffee cakes are not common, you may be more familiar with a concept like tea cakes, which are cakes that are usually served with tea but do not necessarily contain tea. The concept is exactly the same.
Coffee cakes are popular because they are easy to make and taste great. Unlike a frosted cake, a coffee cake comes out of the oven ready to eat with its topping already in place. I tend to make them for brunches and other occasions when I might have a group to entertain for breakfast, but they’re just as good when served to family on the weekends. Some of my favorite coffee cake recipes include:
Martha Stewart has a lot of great recipes in the many books that she has put out and there are a few that I go back to time and again. One of them is for a New York Crumb Cake, a coffee cake that is loaded with deliciously spiced streusel topping. I am a big fan of coffee cakes in general (who doesn’t like streusel?) and, after trying several other coffee cake recipes she’s done, I have to say that Martha definitely knows what she is doing in the coffee cake department.
A big picture of little streusel-topped cakes popped out at me when I was paging through my copy of Martha Stewart Cupcakes. They’re listed in the book under the name Streusel Cupcakes. I didn’t need any urging to try the recipe out. It was good, but reminded me more of coffee cake than of cupcakes. So, after trying a few different batches, I made some very slight changes and rechristened these Coffee Cake Muffins. These are single-serving coffee cakes that are perfect for big brunches or other gatherings of streusel-loving coffee cake fans.
The cakes are fantastic little coffee cakes. They have a moist, muffin-like texture and tons of streusel. The streusel is made with brown sugar and has quite a bit of flour in it, when compared with other streusel topping recipes. This gives it a lot of structure, so it forms nice, big crumbs on top of the cake. It bakes up to be slightly crunchy, providing a nice contrast to the rest of the cake in texture, as well as in color. A little bit of vanilla glaze on top adds some extra sweetness and gives them a nice finished look
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