Interruption for pecan-cinnamon coffee cake

Coffee cake seems to be an American thing, for me another relic from my childhood spent amongst Americans. Because by coffee cake I don’t mean coffee-flavoured cake, I mean a general group of cakes originally meant to be eaten along with a cup of coffee. Of course, any cake can be eaten along with a cup of coffee, so I’m not sure why there is a specific kind of cake that’s given this definition. Regardless, as far as my experience goes, coffee cakes are sometimes but not always yeasted, often contain nuts and are often topped with a buttery, crumbly streusel topping – no frosting or icing. They tend to be sturdy, moist cakes, flavoured with vanilla and maybe some spices, but nothing too overpowering. They are, in fact, very good to have with a cup of coffee, and so I decided to bake one for afternoon coffee with a friend (fine, we had tea. Hopefully there are no coffee cake police).

I had a bag of good fresh pecan nuts that I had to use before we left, so I did some searching for pecan nut coffee cakes on the interwebs. There were many, but here’s something that bothered me: this kind of cake is not supposed to be very sweet, yet most of the recipes had many, many cups of sugar, and some even had glazes topping the streusel. Just reading the recipes made my teeth ache. So I used a few different recipes as pointers and cut and pasted and edited until I ended up with my own coffee cake. Sweet and buttery, but not so much so that you wouldn’t be able to have a piece for breakfast. Of course along with the obligatory coffee.

Pecan-cinnamon coffee cake

Makes one large sheet-pan cake

You can easily play with this recipe, using different nuts or spices, adding raisins, or citrus juice and zest.

Streusel:

1 ¾ c flour

½ c treacle sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

½ c butter, cold and cubed

½ toasted, chopped pecan nuts

Middle layer:

¼ c treacle sugar

¼ tsp cinnamon

1 c toasted, chopped pecan nuts

Batter:

½ c butter

2 c flour

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

¾ c sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla

¾ c sour cream or full fat yoghurt

½ c milk

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Butter a large casserole dish or sheet pan and dust with flour, shaking out excess flour. Set aside.

For the streusel, combine all the streusel ingredients in a bowls and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Set aside.

For the middle layer, combine all middle layer ingredients in a small bowl and toss together. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the remaining butter and sugar until light. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the bowl, add the sour cream (or yoghurt), milk and vanilla extract, and beat until well combined with no lumps.

Spoon half of the batter into the prepared pan and smooth with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle the middle layer mixture over the batter evenly, then top with the remaining batter and smooth over to cover completely. Finally top evenly with the streusel mixture.

Slide into the hot oven and bake for 40 – 50 minutes, until the topping is golden and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool at least ten minutes before cutting into squares.