Cinnamon Crunch Coffee Cake

Cinnamon Crunch Coffee Cake
or Delicious Birthday Cake

Makes 1 Cake Serving 8-12This basic cake recipe can be adapted so many ways. You can bake it in a rectangular pan with a streusel topping and serve it for breakfast. You can add fresh fruit to it: nectarines, peaches, apples, pears, blueberries, blackberries…whatever you’re in the mood for. You can also make it as an 8 inch round birthday cake and frost it with cream cheese frosting (and skip the streusel). It is delicious either way.
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
Zest of 1 lemon, optional (a microplane works best)
4 eggs, at room temperature
3 cups unbleached white flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sour cream or crème fraiche
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups fresh fruit of your choice, optional
Cream Cheese frosting if making cake (separate recipe)

Streusel topping for coffee cake option at the end of recipe
1. Butter and flour rectangular coffee cake pan or 2 8-inch round cake pans. Preheat the oven to 350º F.

2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and zest together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time, mixing them completely into the batter after each addition. Sift the dry ingredients together and add them alternately with the sour cream. Stir in the vanilla extract. (Fold in fruit if you are adding fruit.) Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

3. With coffee cake you can serve it in the dish you bake it in. (I have ceramic off-white casserole style dish that I bake mine in. Martha Stewart from K-Mart if you must know!) If using metal round cake pans, let cool in pans for 10 minutes. Then turn out onto cooling racks to cool. When cool frost with cream cheese frosting.
Streusel Topping
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter
2 cups light or dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cup unbleached flour
3 tablespoons cinnamon
Pinch of salt1. In a food processor or with a pastry blender, cut all ingredients together until the mixture resembles coarse meal. (Someone used to say to me, the size of peas). Mix in or top coffee cake with this.

2. Alternately, you can make the streusel mixture, put it on a cookie sheet and bake it for 5 to 8 minutes. This makes it more of a hard crunch topping. Some people like it soft, and some people like it crunchy. Do what you like the most.

Maili Halme Brocke