I have a weakness for coffee cake. (I also have a weakness for fresh sourdough bread, pricey cheeses, and Swedish fish, but let’s stick with coffee cake for right now, okay?) I think it has something to do with the name: coffee cake. Coffee and cake, two of my favorite things in one title, win and win. Or maybe it’s the idea of a cake made specifically to eat with coffee? I don’t know, but whenever I spy a recipe for coffee cake, I have to read it. It’s a compulsion.

However, in spite of my abiding love and affection, coffee cakes are often (usually? always?) either a little too dry or a little too fluffy. Coffee cakes, according to moi, ought to be dense, heavy almost, and very, very moist. And even though coffee cakes are fashioned from a string of ordinary ingredients — butter, vanilla, cream — those ingredients are (verily, I say unto you!) some of the best things in the world, and their flavors ought to sing through loud and clear.

So anyway, the other week when cool weather struck, I got hit with the need for coffee cake. Or wait — maybe I got the idea for coffee cake when I deep-cleaned my pots-and-pans cupboard and discovered a handsome tube pan hanging out in the back corner? Ah well. Either way, a coffee cake craving was sparked.

Reading through recipes, I discovered an as-yet-untried coffee cake recipe in my hefty Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. True to (their) form, the method seemed unnecessary complicated, but then I read this:

Rather than creaming the butter and sugar, which made the cake too light and airy, we cut softened butter and some of the sour cream into the dry ingredients, then added the eggs and the rest of the sour cream; the result was a tighter crumb.

Well then.

The cake was what I was after. Like, exactly. So dense, so rich, so flavorful! The only problems were 1) I trashed the kitchen in the process, and 2) the cinnamon sugar mixture partially sunk so the swirly effect got lost.

In an attempt to solve the sinking sugar issue, I made the cake again. (I also made the book’s cream cheese coffee cake which I did not like at all.) The second time around, the problem was even worse. Almost all the cinnamon sugar sunk to the bottom, creating a bottom layer of chewy caramel. Which isn’t necessarily a tragedy. In fact, some might even consider cake bottom caramelization an asset.

I still haven’t solved the problem — am I beating the batter too long? should I reduce the amount of cinnamon sugar? increase/decrease the oven temp? — but I’m gearing up to make it again. If I learn anything new, I’ll update.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Adapted from the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook.

for the streusel:
¾ cup each flour and sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar, divided
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup pecans

Put the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and ¼ cup of the brown sugar in a food processor. Whirl to combine. 

Remove 1¼ cups of the flour-sugar mixture, and transfer it to a small bowl and add the remaining ¼ cup of brown sugar — this is your streusel filling.

Add the butter and the pecans to the mixture that’s still in the processor and pulse until pebbly — this is your streusel topping.

for the cake:
2¼ cups flour
1¼ cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon each baking soda and salt
12 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
1½ cups sour cream, divided
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter and ½ cup of the sour cream and beat gently until the mixture comes together. Add the remaining sour cream, eggs, and vanilla and mix just until combined. (If you beat it longer, the cake will be lighter — not what we want here.)

Pour about a third of the batter into a greased tube pan. Sprinkle in half of the streusel filling mixture. Another third of the batter and the remaining streusel mixture. Pour in the last third of the batter and top with the pecan streusel.

Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan at room temp for 30 minutes before cutting around the sides with a table knife and gently inverting the cake onto a plate, streusel side down. Remove the tube pan, set a cooling rack on top of the cake and flip again. Allow the cake to cool completely before transfering to a serving dish.

This same time, years previous: apple dumplings, cinnamon pretzels, 2015 garden stats and notes, chatty time, posing for candy, why I’m spacey, homemade Greek yogurt.

This morning I raced back from Panera so I could get home in time to listen to the On Point report on unschooling while I went on my run. My younger daughter loaned me her ipod, and just as the conversation started, I popped in one ear piece (leaving the other open to listen for crazy drivers) and headed out.

It was a good thing I was running while listening because it probably helped to diffuse my mounting frustration, but by the time I got home I was yelling and flapping my arms anyway. An hour of listening to people talk past each other will do that to me.

I’ve already ranted to a few of my kids and a friend. I should probably call my husband and warn him to brace himself.

In other news, my head is feeling over-full. I need to write it out — writing is how I ground myself — but when I’m drowning in ideas, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to sit myself down, put blinders on, and type one single solitary letter of the alphabet after another. But blogger Shannan says, “When life feels big, it’s more important than ever to get small.” So I’m sitting here forcing myself to type words, nothing words, just so I can find a way forward.

This is not interesting.

But it is true.

In other news, my son invited a bunch of friends over for his birthday supper. Two of the three guys share the same birthday week, and those same two kids are both miles away from their parents, so it was super fun to feed them.

Before the meal, I made everyone watch the timpano making-and-eating clip from Big Night so they could fully appreciate what they were about to eat.

They polished off both the entire timpano and a giant salad, and they managed to nearly eat all the way through a small mountain of roasted vegetables. They did serious damage to the pies and ice cream, too, all the while regaling us with stories from their lives.

Teenagers are so much fun.

In other news, one of the women in my writing group recently posted an article: Blood on Our Hands: 7 Reasons Why I’m a Christian Against Abortion Who Doesn’t Vote Pro-Life. As a group, we’d read through a string of drafts, and when she finally, after months of work, hit publish, it felt like a birth. Post-publication, my first words to her were, “How does it feel to be postpartum?” We clinked glasses of bubbly cider and cheered, so happy to have her hard work finally out in the world. (And only now, as I type this, do I realize the irony in my birthing analogy. Ha!)

In other news, the other day my younger son got a raging craving for pizza. All the recipes called for yeast, or at least the availability of already-made bread (bagels, tortillas, English muffins and the like) for a makeshift crust. We, however, had no bread.

Then, in my aunt’s cookbook, he landed upon a recipe for quick pizza crust. Similar to my English muffins, the recipe called for flour, baking powder, salt, and yogurt…which we had! My son stirred up a batch and in no time at all he had a handsome little pizza all for himself.

So in the off-chance that you’re having a pizza emergency, here you go!


Lickety-Split Pizza Crust
Adapted from Baking With Whole Grains by Valerie Baer.

The recipe calls for full-fat Greek yogurt, but my son used nonfat.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
½ cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ – 1 cup Greek yogurt

Stir the ingredients together, starting with a half cup of yogurt and adding more as necessary. Knead the dough lightly to form a ball. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and transfer to a oiled baking sheet. Top with pizza sauce, cheese, and favorite toppings. Bake at 400 degrees until the crust is golden brown and crispy and the cheese is bubbling.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (10.30.17), the quotidian (10.31.16), apple farro salad, stuffed peppers, quiche soup, apples schmapples, dusting the dough.

This same time, years previous: the young adult child, listening, watching, reading, the business of school, the quotidian (10.28.13). the quotidian (10.29.12), under the grape arbor, applesauce cake, brown sugar syrup.