Coffee Cake – The Pajama Chef

Happy Valentine’s Day! I’m afraid I don’t have any lovey-dovey dessert to offer you today. For your chocolate overload or cutesy heart shape dessert, you’ll have to look elsewhere. If you need an easy red velvet dessert, check out these Red Velvet Marshmallow Bites I made last year. Yum!

Today all I have to offer you is breakfast. A treat for tomorrow, perhaps? I hope cranberries aren’t too hard to come by in your part of the world on this fine February morning. They certainly make this cinnamon sugar-laced coffee cake something extra special.

This cake is so easy to make, and is a perfect buttery base for those tart berries. I added a bit of cinnamon and cloves to the original recipe, thinking those warm spices would be delicious alongside the orange zest, and you know what? I was RIGHT!

To top everything off, add a light powdered sugar icing. It makes all the difference! I heated up the icing just before drizzling on the cake–a very good move, as it crisped up after meeting the cake. I just love crisp glaze-y icing. Delish!

one year ago: Go-To Pancakes
two years ago: Mexican Chicken Alfredo
three years ago: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Fresh Cranberry Coffee Cake [slightly adapted from Sweet Anna’s]
click to print

Ingredients:

for cake

1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour [I used white whole wheat]
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
zest of one orange
12 ounces fresh or frozen cranberries

for icing

1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan with a removable bottom. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer [or with a hand mixer], beat eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy, nearly doubled in size. This will take about 8 minutes.

Add in butter and vanilla, and beat for an additional 2 minutes.

Stir in flour, nutmeg, cloves, and orange zest with a wooden spoon until just combined. It will be very thick.

Spoon half of the batter into the bundt pan, then evenly top with the cranberries and reserved cinnamon sugar mixture. Spoon the rest of the batter over the cranberries [some cranberries may still be visible].

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Check after about 30 minutes, and cover with foil if cake is browning too much.

Remove to a wire rack to cool, gently using a knife to loosen cake from the bottom and sides of the pan. After cake cools completely, whisk together the powdered sugar and milk, microwave for about 30 seconds, then drizzle over the cake before serving.

Time: 60 minutes [15 minutes active].

Yield: 12 servings.

Linked up with: Weekend Potluck.

So, it’s springtime… but not quite berry season yet. Never mind–frozen berries work just fine in this fluffy, light coffee cake that features not just one but two kinds of delicious berries for your enjoyment. Drool! Raspberries and blueberries pair perfectly in this indulgent breakfast-y dessert treat. There’s just something so special about raspberries, huh? I think so, anyway.

Royal Berry Coffee Cake was the product of a recent Saturday night baking experiment. Those are the best! I started the tradition in high school when I’d bake at night after getting home from running at a cross country or track meet, watching classic TLC shows like “Trading Spaces.” Sometimes friends would be over baking with me, other times it’d just be me and the pets. Now, it’s me and the kitty… with Ben someplace nearby.

The recipe originally was my mom’s, pulled from a newspaper or newsletter of some sort [the credit goes to a woman from at Purdue… just googled her, apparently she’s a chef at at dining hall]. My mom had noted that it was delicious in August 2006, and I am happy to report that it was absolutely phenomenal in April 2012. 🙂 Sweet!

The main change I made to the original recipe was doubling it and baking it in a Bundt pan instead of a 9×13 pan. I did not double the amount of berries [because I wouldn’t have had enough otherwise], so feel free to halve the recipe if that works better for you–just bake it for about 30 minutes instead.

However you make it, this springtime cake is sure to satisfy. Each bite of vanilla cake is dotted with berries, and looks impressive when it’s really a cinch to make. The hardest part is waiting for it to bake… the smell is just incredible, and it tastes even better! Make this now!!

What are you baking this spring?

Royal Berry Coffee Cake [adapted from Grace Brutsman, Hillenbrand Hall]
click to print

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup frozen red raspberries
1 cup frozen blueberries

Directions:

Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan, then set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Stir together flour and baking powder. Set dry ingredients inside.

Then, cream butter in a stand mixer, incorporating sugar gradually, beating well after each addition until mixture is fluffy and light. Stir in eggs one by one, beating for 1 minute to combine.

Stir vanilla into milk in a measuring cup. Then, alternate adding dry and wet ingredients into bowl of stand mixer, beating well after each addition.

Place half of each type of berry in bottom of prepared pan. Cover with half of cake batter, add rest of berries, and top with remaining batter.

Bake in preheated oven for 65-75 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cover with foil after about 45 minutes if the cake starts to get dark.

Cool for 15-25 minutes before inverting on cooling rack, loosening edges with plastic knife if necessary.

Time: 85 minutes [10 minutes active].

Yield: 16-20 servings.