Recipe Notes: Coffee Cake with Pecan-Cinnamon Streusel

25 April 2018

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, January 2018

I don't recall ever making a coffee cake, perhaps because I don't drink coffee? Nonetheless, I do enjoy having baked goods for breakfast and I didn't see why a coffee cake couldn't be eaten after dinner as a dessert as well as for breakfast.

The streusel topping and batter for this cake each came together quickly in a food processor. First the streusel was made with toasted pecans, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, butter, and water. I toasted the pecans in a small skillet on the stove and, unfortunately, over-toasted (a.k.a. burnt) them. The topping was set aside and the batter was made from flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, butter, milk, egg, and vanilla extract. Note these were not all just dumped together in the processor but rather added following a sequence described in the recipe. In particular, the butter was added to the flour before adding the wet ingredients to help ensure tenderness. The batter was poured into a greased and floured springform pan, the streusel was sprinkled on top, and the cake baked in a 350° oven. From starting to removing the cake from the oven was 1 hour, 40 minutes.

I took the cake to a meeting with friends for dessert and received generally positive feedback. I personally thought it was a little bland for a dessert cake. It had a good, firm but tender texture, was not too sweet, and had a gentle cinnamon flavor. I had feared the burnt pecans would add bitter notes to the cake but these were not apparent. I had the leftover cake for breakfast where I thought it worked better and I enjoyed it more than I had when it was served for dessert.