One of my favorite breakfast treats is Entenmann’s crumb coffee cake. It never lasts long in our house since I simply cannot control myself around it. I knew it was only a matter of time until I tried making one from scratch. For my first try, I went with Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe. It’s very straight forward and easy to put together.
Of course, there’s always the chance you’ll misread the ingredients during your prep and melt 1 3/4 cups of butter instead of 1/2 cup. Looks like I’ll be baking cookies later this week to use up the extra butter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New York Style Crumb Cake
Crumb topping:
1/3 cup (66 grams) granulated sugar
1/3 cup (66 grams) dark brown sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp table salt
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
1 3/4 cups (198 grams) cake flour
Whisk the sugars, cinnamon, salt, and butter in a medium bowl to combine. Add flour and stir with rubber spatula or wooden spoon until mixture resembles thick, cohesive dough. Set aside to cool to room temperature – about 10-15 mins.
Cake:
1 1/4 cups (142 grams) cake flour
1/2 cup (99 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp table salt
6 Tbsp (85 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, softened but still cool
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup buttermilk
Powdered sugar for dusting
Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 325F. Spray 8-inch square pan with cooking spray and line with parchment paper, allowing excess to hang over the sides.
Using an electric mixer on low speed, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt to combine. With mixer continuing to run at low speed, add butter one piece at a time; continuing to beat until mixture resembles moist crumbs with no visible butter chunks visible – 1-2 mins. Add egg, yolk, vanilla, and buttermilk; beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 1 min, scraping once if necessary.
Transfer batter to baking pan using rubber spatula, spread the batter into an even layer. Break apart the crumb topping into large pea-sized pieces and spread in an even layer over the batter, beginning with the edges and then working toward the center. Be sure not to push the crumbs into the batter, just sprinkle on top. Bake until the crumbs are golden and a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean – 35-40 mins.
Cool on wire rack at least 30 mins. Lift out of pan using parchment overhang. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.
Casual Confections 