Coffee Cake

In the American sense, this is cake that you have with coffee.

This cake comes from the Preppy Kitchen blog: https://preppykitchen.com/coffee-cake/. The amount of filling and streusel may seem disproportionate to the amount of cake, that’s because it is. Roll with it. Use it all. This is a shite photo, it's a fantastic cake.

Ingredients:

For the Filling:

¾ cup / 150g light brown sugar

¼ cup / 30g plain flour

2 tsp ground cinnamon

For the Streusel:

2/3 cup / 133g light brown sugar

1 cup / 120g plain flour

2 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

½ cup / 113g cold, diced unsalted butter

For the Cake:

2 ¼ cups / 270g plain flour

¼ cup / 30g cornstarch (UK cornflour)

2 ½ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

¾ cup / 170g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup / 200g sugar, granulated or caster

½ cup / 100g light brown sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup / 240ml / 242g sour cream, at room temperature

Instructions:

For the Filling:

In a bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, flour and cinnamon, set aside.

For the Streusel:

In a bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt.

Add the cubed chilled butter, and using your clean cold fingers, work the butter into the dry ingredients until you have a crumbly mixture, set aside.

For the Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F / 180˚ C.

Line a 9 x 9-inch pan with parchment paper and set aside.

I used an 8 x 8-inch silicone pan, no need to line, and it’ll just be a deeper cake, with denser filling and streusel.

In a bowl, sift together the flour, corn starch, baking powder and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and granulated or caster sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the light brown sugar and the vanilla extract.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Scrape the bowl down at least once, there is a lot of side stickage.

Add the sour cream and mix on low until just combined.

Add the dry ingredients, mix until just combined, then scrape the bowl down and mix to make sure all stray bits are incorporated.

Pour half the cake batter into the prepared pan and smooth out.

Spoon the filling over the top and spread into an even layer.

There’s a lot, get it all in there!

Spoon the rest of the cake batter over the filling and smooth out.

Be careful, do not upset the cinnamon filling.

Top with the streusel.

This will seem insane, there is a lot of streusel, there will be a lot of streusel.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, until it passes the clean knife test.

There was a streusel upset. Literally, it was set up. This is fine. It's not ideal, but it's fine.

Let cool in the pan for c. 20 minutes before cutting.

Check out that cinnamon layer.

Eat this over a plate or the sink, it's a bit messy, crumbs everywhere. Delicious crumbs.