You'll Want To Eat ALL the Crumbs...

(Oh my, it has been a long time since I've posted. My sincerest apologies; I fully intended to keep updating, but my busy schedule got in the way. An excellent recipe, however, has roused this blog from its hibernation...)

There's coffee cake, and then there's coffee cake. I'm not talking about the ordinary, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill yellow cakes with a smattering of thin cinnamon streusel. The real deal is crumb cake as it's done in New York: tender cake absolutely loaded with buttery, crunchy crumbs that fall all over the place and positively burst with flavor.

Hungry yet? I bet you're wondering how to make such a wickedly good concoction. Well, this delightful treat is from the folks at America's Test Kitchen, whose recipes have never failed me. The cake itself is extremely easy to make and comes together quickly--less than 5 minutes. The crumbs, on the other hand, are another story. Each crumb is formed individually by hand from a soft dough, and there are literally hundreds of crumbs. This process took me a good 45 minutes to an hour; it definitely fell into the "labor of love" category.

The successful cake you see here is, in fact, my second attempt. You see, at first, I thought that the recipe was a dud, or at least not the best crumb cake recipe out there. I later figured out that I had made two mistakes: for one, I tried to substitute my usual milk and vinegar mixture for buttermilk; secondly, I made the crumbs pretty big. This was unfortunately a bad combination: the buttermilk substitute made the batter too thin, and the heavy crumbs sank, giving the finished cake an appearance (but not texture) somewhere between sausage cornbread and fruit suspended in Jell-O. The second time, I used real buttermilk and made smaller crumbs, and I was much more successful.

The cake was absolutely delicious and definitely worth the effort! You may even need to brew some coffee to give yourself an excuse to indulge. :-)

New York-Style Crumb Cake
Adapted from The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2008.
Makes one 8-inch square cake.
Crumb Topping:
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups (7 ounces) cake flour

** Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and set oven rack to upper or upper-middle position. **

1. Whisk the warm melted butter, sugars, cinnamon, and salt together in a medium bowl.
2. Stir in flour until mixture becomes a thick dough and no streaks of flour remain.
3. Let cool 10 minutes.
4. Lay sheet of wax paper on workspace.
5. Break off pieces of dough and roll them between your fingers to the size of peas. The crumbs must be relatively small. Set each crumb on wax paper so that all the crumbs are in a single layer or are slightly overlapping.

Cake:
1 1/4 cups (5 ounces) cake flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, softened
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Crumb topping

1. In large bowl, whisk together cake flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
2. With electric mixer on low speed, add butter pieces one at a time. Mix until no large chunks of butter remain, 1 to 2 minutes.
3. Add buttermilk, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Beat on medium-high speed until batter is light and fluffy, about 1 minute, scraping sides of bowl if necessary.
4. Scrape the batter into a greased 8 x 8-inch pan and smooth the top with a knife or rubber spatula.
5. Sprinkle crumbs evenly over cake, working from the edges toward the center so as not to make the center too heavy.
6. Bake in preheated oven until crumbs are golden and a toothpick inserted near center comes out with moist crumbs, 35 to 40 minutes.
7. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy warm or at room temperature. If desired, dust with powdered sugar just before serving.

Coffee? I'd Rather Have Cake!

I love baking cake; in fact, it might be one of my favorite treats to make. I was looking through my "Recipes to Test" file and saw that nearly all of them were cake recipes. That just goes to show where my tastes lie! But really, cake is very difficult to hate--there are so many flavors to choose from, and the (ideal) texture is just so lovely.

Enter the Sour Cream Coffee Cake from The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2008, of which I have posted a review. Would you believe that, before this experience, I had never used sour cream in baking? Ever? I know, it's shameful but true; I just never had occasion to. Well, this was as good a time as any to try my hand at baking with sour cream, and it really does add a lot to the texture of a cake, although I must say that non-sour-cream cakes can be just as nice.

So I have good news and bad news about this recipe. The good news is that the cake tastes delicious, and it is so light and fluffy. I cut the cake recipe in half and baked it in an 8x8-inch pan; the streusel topping I reduced to a quarter of the original recipe, and it was enough. Believe it or not, I do care just a bit about calories, and I thought it wise to reduce the streusel topping a little. Oh, and the finished topping? It was wonderful, with an excellent cinnamon flavor and a good crunch from the almonds I used.

Now the bad news. My "oh damn" moment... Due to the different pan size, I was unsure of baking time (I usually estimate correctly but was a bit off this time), and I tested the cake too early. Thus, I had the pleasure of watching the middle of the cake sink right before my eyes, as if I were deflating a balloon. Whoops. I'm going to blame that little blunder on the oven's less-than-well-behaved antics as of late. But the texture in the middle did not suffer terribly, so the consequences were mostly aesthetic. Even then, no one really noticed, so I didn't worry about it too much, and neither should you (if that happens)! Coffee cake, I have found, is quite a bit sturdier and therefore more forgiving than your standard, delicate, birthday-cake creation.

You may have noticed that, throughout this post, I have refrained from using the word... moist. I really hate it when people use that word because, in my opinion, that's what a cake should be. It is the normative, so to speak, and I think that saying a cake is moist or should be moist is a bit redundant. Besides, the term is overused. I prefer less tired words like velvety, silky, soft, and fluffy. And they all describe this cake, so make it! Right now! Here's the recipe!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Adapted from The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2008.
Makes two 8-inch square or 9-inch round cakes.
Streusel Topping:
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated white sugar
45 grams (1/3 cup) all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup pecans, almonds, or walnuts, chopped

Cake:
420 grams (3 cups) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sour cream [a 16-ounce tub should be just enough]
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated white sugar
3 eggs
7 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly

** Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. **

1. Make Streusel: Combine sugars, flour, butter, and cinnamon in medium bowl, and rub with fingers until mixture is no longer powdery. Stir in nuts and set aside.
2. In large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
3. In medium bowl, whisk sour cream, sugars, eggs, and butter until thoroughly combine.
4. Gradually whisk sour cream mixture into dry ingredients until just blended.
5. Pour into greased pans and sprinkle topping evenly over batter.
6. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs attached.
7. Let cool in pan on wire rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

Celebrating Deliciously

Everyone always seems to have a lot of spirit on the Fourth of July--very colorful spirit. I knew, therefore, that I wanted to make an equally colorful dessert, but what would I use to achieve those colors? I had been itching to bake a cake, so I decided to satisfy that urge. Plus, cakes are easy to make colorful because there are many, many combinations of frosting, filling, cake layers, et cetera, to use.

I knew exactly how I would make the white portion of the cake: first, the layers themselves, and second, the frosting. Tucked away in my "Please Test These Recipes!" file was a recipe for Real Vanilla Bean Buttercream from Baking Bites, with a couple of modifications to compensate for my lack of vanilla-bean ownership. The cake itself is a yellow cake recipe that I originally found on Crisco's web site and since have made my own. I always joke that it's a butter cake without any actual butter, but it still tastes delicious, with quite a bit of moistness and fluffiness. If you're looking for a better-tasting version of a box mix, this is it--and you can make it by hand!!

As for the red, I opted for a nice strawberry sauce from Joy of Baking, and, to achieve the blue, I sprinkled some fresh blueberries on top.

The cake came out wonderfully; as you can see, it is nice and high, and, although the strawberry sauce kind of disappeared, there is a nice hint of red that completes the patriotism of the cake. I found that I couldn't mix the cake with a mixer due to the large amount of batter, so I had to do it by hand (it gets easier every time, I promise!). And the frosting... oh, the frosting... it looked like ricotta cheese for quite a while once I added the pound of butter, but I just kept beating and beating, and it came together like a thing of beauty. So have faith when you make this frosting; it will pay off!!

Yellow "Butter" Cake
Adapted from Crisco.
Makes one two-layer 9-inch cake.
300 grams (2 1/2 cups) sifted cake flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk, divided
2/3 cup shortening (e.g., Crisco; do not substitute butter)
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

**Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.**

1. In large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
2. Add 3/4 cup milk and all of shortening. Beat 300 strokes by hand or 2 minutes on medium speed of electric mixer.
3. Add remaining 1/2 cup milk, eggs, and vanilla. Beat 300 more strokes by hand or 2 more minutes on medium speed of electric mixer.
4. Divide batter evenly between pans, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until cake tester comes out with moist crumbs.
5. Turn cakes out onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting and filling.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
Adapted from Baking Bites.
Makes enough to fill and frost one 9-inch layer cake.
1 pound (2 cups or 4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-sized chunks
1 cup sugar, divided
1/4 cup water
5 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Separate eggs while they are cold, and place whites in large mixer bowl. Save or discard yolks.
2. Combine 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water in small saucepan. Set aside.
3. Measure out 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (in separate bowls) and place near egg whites.
4. Place saucepan over medium heat and bring to 230 degrees F (soft-thread stage) on candy thermometer.
5. While sugar continues to cook, beat egg whites; when they are frothy, reduce mixer speed to medium-low, and add cream of tartar. Slowly add 1/4 cup sugar.
6. When egg whites reach the soft-peak stage, remove boiling sugar syrup from heat and slowly stream it into egg-white mixture. Beat mixture until bowl is no longer warm to the touch, a few minutes.
7. Add butter, piece by piece, until all butter has been added.
8. Beat until mixture is smooth, about 10-20 minutes. Mixture will separate, look awful, curdle, shrivel, whine, frighten, or all of the above; just keep beating until it is smooth. It will come.
9. Store at room temperature.

Strawberry Sauce
Adapted from Joy of Baking.
Makes enough for a thin layer of filling; can be doubled.
10 ounces fresh or frozen (thawed, undrained) strawberries
2-4 tablespoons sugar

1. Puree strawberries in food processor.
2. Transfer to bowl or measuring cup; stir in sugar to taste. Serve immediately or refrigerate (or don't--it can stay on the cake at room temperature without dire consequences).