Spice Coffee Cake
One of the many things I like to do is pamper my First Reader. When we had an unexpected morning, just the two of us, and time to do things, I asked him what he'd like for breakfast. Waffles, pancakes, biscuits? I offered. Coffee cake?
Oh, yes! His eyes lit up. What about the coffee cake recipe in my mother's cookbook?
My mother-in-law gave us the nicest gift - the cookbook he grew up with. A McCalls from the early 1960s, it is heavily annotated, stuffed full of clipped recipes, and held together with a duct-taped spine. Off I went to see what recipe it held for us.
Which is a perfectly cromulent recipe, but not quite what I wanted. For one, that's not at all the style streusel I make. For another, I didn't have biscuit mix on hand.
So! Time to find my Henry Notebook (because for some reason this has become my recipe workbook) and start noodling down ideas. I wanted to do a double batch, so I could take some over to the Blanket Fort later in the day while I was writing, and share with whoever passed through. I also wanted to add more spice, as the First Reader loves spice cake. Plus, I bought myself whole mace a while back, and this could be a great excuse to go ahead and grind some up for easier use.
Spice Coffee Cake
Preheat oven to 350F
Streusel Topping
3/4 c cold butter
3/4 c brown sugar (packed)
1 c flour
2 tsp cinnamon
Cut the butter into the sugar, flour, and cinnamon until it is pea-sized pieces. You can do this with a pastry blender, a fork, or a couple of pulses in a food processor with the blade attachment.
Spice Batter
4 c flour
1/2 c sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground mace
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
Sift together the dry ingredients. Mix, then add:
3 eggs
4 tbsp butter melted together with
1/8 c lard
2 c buttermilk (or acidify the milk with 1 tsp lemon juice)
Pour the batter into well-greased pans. Will make one small bundt pan and an 8" cake pan, or a large bundt.
Sprinkle streusel liberally over the top of the batter. Any extra streusel can be popped into a baggie and frozen for later use.
Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes, until a wooden tester comes out cleanly.
Allow to cool briefly, then serve!
This came out lightly sweet, with the rich sweet topping a nicely crunchy coating. It is not as crumbly as coffeecake made with biscuit mix. You could actually pick up slices of this and eat it while you sipped your coffee. It is also a bit richer and more substantial than most, but I did that on purpose. It makes a great sustaining snack!
