I love coffee cake. Especially Starbucks’ coffee cake. I found this recipe and tried it out, and it’s delicious. I screwed it up and did it backwards but it still turned out marvelous!

Time required: 1 hour

Yields: uh, it’s hard to tell cause it’s round, a fair amount?

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients: $62

Kitchen implements I used:

• Nemo the Kitchen Aid
• two 9″ round pans
• tin foil

INGREDIENTS:

Streusel topping:

• ⅔ C granulated white sugar
• pinch of salt
• ¾ C flour
• ½ TBSP ground cinnamon
• 4 TBSP unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

• 1 C dark brown sugar
• 1½ TBSP ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Cake:

• ¾ C butter, softened
• 1 tsp salt
• 1½ C granulated white sugar
• ⅓ C golden brown sugar
• 2½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp coffee extract
• 3 eggs
• ¾ C plain Greek yogurt
• 1¼ C milk
• 3¾ C flour

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 176°C or 350°F. Line pan with foil and grease it.

2. Make topping; in a bowl combine sugar, salt, flour, and cinnamon. Add melted butter, stir and set aside.

3. Make filling; in a bowl combine brown sugar, cinnamon, and cocoa powder, and set aside.

WTF. Okay, next time check if your brown sugar has solidified. Toss a piece of bread in and hope for the best. We’ll come back to this later.

4. Make the cake; this is where I screwed up. You’re suppose to cream everything except the flour and eggs together. I put all the dry ingredients plus flour together first. Ooops. Then add the eggs one at a time.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk together the yogurt and milk till well combined, don’t worry if it’s lumpy.

6. Add half the flour (hah) to butter mixture, half the milk, repeat. Beat til just combined. Get a face shot of milk when the mixer goes crazy.

7. Spread half the batter into the pans. Shake it to even it out.

8. Sprinkle the filling on top.

9. Add the rest of the batter.

10. Sprinkle on the streusel topping.

11. Use a butter knife and swirl it through, don’t worry about being even.

12. Bake 55 min if using 2 rounds (or 55-60 if a 9 x 13).
When it’s done, if you lightly press on the top it will spring back up.

13. Leave in pan, place on wire rack for 20 min to cool before slicing.

Verdict: This was great. I didn’t realize how much sugar was in coffee cake. Also surprised by the high cost of ingredients. You could omit the coffee extract but I wanted to try it. I’d use more of that next time, and I’d check the brown sugar first and soften it ahead of time. Chipping out brown sugar like you’ve got a pickaxe is lame.

Playlist:

Corey Hart – Sunglasses at Night