STREUSEL COFFEE CAKE…A Delectable Cake for Tea or Dessert

STREUSEL COFFEE CAKE

This recipe is adapted from one of the first baking sites I used to browse many many moons ago…the ‘Joy of Baking‘. Just the other day my friend from Kiev & I were chatting online & looking for poppy seed muffin recipes on this site. One thing led to another, & eventually to this delectable looking ‘Streusel Coffee Cake’. This was last week, but the picture had been haunting me ever since & I just HAD to bake it.

I made a few small changes here & there; one for sour cream & the other being orange rind… (couldn’t resist the combination of the plump orange & magical microplaner staring at me). My sister had made an almost similar coffee cake when we were in Dallas this summer, & it was really good. I have used bittersweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips inside & mini chocolate chips in the topping! Didn’t use cinnamon because of the orange rind. This is a lovely, easy to make & moist cake…delicious to the last crumb!!

Ingredients:

Flour – 1 ¾ cups
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Baking soda – ½ tsp

Butter -3/4 cup (140gms)
Sugar – 2/3 cup (original recipe has 3/4 cup)
Eggs – 2 / large
Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp
Yogurt – 4 tbsp
Cream – 2 tbsp (25% fat)
Juice of ½ lime
Zest of 1 orange

Streusel:
Flour – 1 tbsp
Brown sugar – ¼ cup
Toasted walnuts – ½ cup (Toasted in oven for 8-10minutes. Keep an eye on them or they will brown too fast & burn).
Regular chocolate chips – ½ cup (I used Ghirardelli bittersweet)
Mini chocolate chips – ½ cup

Method:

• Line & grease & dust the bottom of a 9” spring form baking tin. Grease and dust the sides.
• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
• Prepare the streusel by mixing the 1 tbsp of flour + brown sugar + toasted walnuts in a bowl. Divide into 2; mix big chocolate chips in one, and the mini chips in the other. (Use only 1 size/variety of chips if you like.)
• Stir together the flour + baking powder + baking soda in a bowl.
• Mix the yogurt + cream + lime juice in a small bowl. (You can use sour cream instead)
• Beat the butter + sugar until light.
• Beat in the eggs one by one, and then the vanilla essence + orange zest.
• Beat in the 1/3 of the flour mixture; then 1/3 of the yogurt/cream mixture. Repeat twice & beat until just mixed in properly.
• Put half the batter in the tin; level out. Sprinkle the half streusel mix with the regular Ghirardelli chips evenly over this.
• Top with the remaining batter; then sprinkle the other half of the streusel mix evenly.
• Bake for approximately 60 minutes/ till done.
• Leave to cool in tin on rack for 10 minutes, and then remove the sides.
• I took the bottom lining parchment off about an hour later; peeled it off carefully as I couldn’t invert the cake, else the topping may have fallen off.
• Serve warm as it is…OR with whipped cream or a dollop of vanilla ice-cream!

Quoting from Joy of Baking, ‘Coffee Cakes are the informal cakes, the ones for everyday. They differ from layer cakes not only in their appearance but also in what they contain. To start with, while a layer cake and a coffee cake do use similar batters, a coffee cake batter is richer in taste and texture by the addition of sour cream. Also, unlike a layer cake that uses a rich icing to both fill and frost the cake, coffee cakes are instantly recognizable by their streusel topping (‘streusel‘ is German for ‘sprinkle’).’

The verdict at home…Smashing Good!! You won’t be disappointed if you serve it warm with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream or whipped cream said the site! WOWEE!! We weren’t disappointed at all.