Coffee Cake

Have you been searching for the perfect coffee cake with a melt-in-your-mouth texture, a delicious crunchy streusel, and of course, a little bit of cinnamon filling inside? This is your lucky day. Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. This cake is gonna be ready in two shakes of a lamb's tail. So let's get started. First off, the cinnamon filling is gonna dissolve and be really delicious in the cake, but you could totally skip it if you just don't want an extra step or if you're not a fan for some reason. So into a small bowl, 3 1⁄4 of a cup of slightly packed light brown sugar. In you go. Two teaspoons of ground cinnamon, one. And if you want, you can totally add other spices that you enjoy too, maybe a little bit of nutmeg, whatever flows your boat. 1 1⁄4 cup of flour, in you go. Just give it a mash and mix it up. If you opened up your brown sugar and it is rock hard, don't worry, all you have to do is either put it in a plastic bag or a glass bowl, add a wet paper towel on top, and microwave it for like a minute. And then just give it a chance to kind of like breathe and come back to life, and it'll be delicious. It's no fun when you open the pantry ready to make something and your sugar's just like a giant rock, it's not cool. Okay, just broke up a couple little lumps. This is ready to set aside now, and we're gonna do the streusel next. For your streusel top, you have a couple options. I'm gonna do the method where I mix it up with my little fingers, but you can just use melted butter too. It's really whichever you prefer. Into a medium bowl, 2 1⁄3 of a cup of lightly packed light brown sugar. You could totally use dark brown sugar for this, by the way, if you wanted. 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon again. Coffee cake that's good is so good. It's like moist, it melts in your mouth, that really nice crunchy top. But sad coffee cake is just so sad. You shouldn't have to live through those things. And one cup of all-purpose flour, in you go. Let's give this a little bit of a mash and mix. And now it's the fun part. I have eight tablespoons, 1⁄2 of a cup, 113 grams of unsalted butter. It could be a little bit cold, it could be room temperature, it doesn't really matter. Just cut it up into small pieces to give it a head start, and dump it in. Okay, now you're gonna use your clean fingers to just move things around in here. Just like you're making a pastry dough by hand, you're gonna start mixing it up, mashing it up. There you go, you're gonna end up with a crumbly mixture. I actually really enjoy this part. Use both hands and just mush it up, mush, mush, mush. Some people think the streusel is the best part of a coffee cake. For me, it's that perfect, like moist, melt-in-your-mouth cake. But you have to have a streusel topping. It just isn't the same without it. You can see right now, it's becoming a crumbly mixture. You just wanna like get that butter worked in nicely. And you can squeeze it into a giant clump if you want, like mega clump, and then just break it apart too. It smells amazing, by the way, I can't tell you. One last big clump and press, and then just break it apart. That is ready to be crumbled on top at the very end. Set this aside, wash your hands, and let's get these dry ingredients sorted. I'm adding two and a quarter cups of all-purpose flour into a bowl that is over a scale but under a sifter. That's 270 grams if you're counting. To that, I'll be adding one quarter cup of cornstarch. This will give you a nice, tender, delicious cake. If you don't have cornstarch, you can totally use two and a half cups of cake flour. That is gonna work as well. Three quarters of a teaspoon of salt, in you go. And now I'm adding two and a half teaspoons of baking powder. One, two, and three, there we go. One, two, and a half. I scooped out that extra half teaspoon, that was an accident. Gave it a sift, say thank you to the scale, and give it a whisk. We can set this aside now. We have the cake batter, which we started. Now it's time for those delicious wet ingredients like butter, sugar, and sour cream. For this part, we're gonna cream three quarters of a cup, one and a half sticks, of unsalted butter at room temperature. Start off with the paddle mixer, give a little cream. Yes, you could totally use a big bowl and an electric hand mixer. You do not need a stand mixer for this. Give it a nice start. I'm gonna add in one cup of granulated sugar. In you go. Mix it up, let it get light and fluffy. You can let the mixer run for a minute or two. Now we're gonna plop in half a cup or 100 grams of light brown sugar. Keep mixing. Whenever you're mixing butter, sugar, wet ingredients, make sure to scrape the bowl down. It makes a huge difference. I feel like I harp on this, but it's so important. It can really mess up your recipes if you don't. You'll have one cake layer that's perfect and one that looks crazy because the ingredients weren't mixed properly. So I'm scraping the bowl down. We're gonna mix it up just one more minute. Okay, time for three eggs, one at a time. I use large room temperature eggs. Extra large will work here too. I personally think the whole egg sizing thing is not real because you get extra large eggs. They're like this big, like a quail laid them. Just saying. All right, one egg in. Let it mix up. Add the next egg and the last one too. While that's mixing together, two teaspoons or 10 milliliters of a nice vanilla. Our last wet ingredient is one full cup of sour cream. Amazing. It's gonna give you a little bit of tang and a lot of bit of moisture. If you can't get your hands on this, you can totally use plain yogurt instead. Let that mix up. And yes, you should scrape that bowl down one last time. Last but not least, we're gonna combine the wet and the dry together. You can just scoot that on in there carefully. Mix it until it's almost combined and we're gonna finish it off by hand. I was actually talking to someone yesterday and she mentioned that she baked these delicious muffins or like some banana bread or something and it shrunk down afterwards. It's because she over mixed it. It went mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. Gluten developed, yanked it back after the bake. So it looked perfect right out of the oven, but then it shrank down and became dense. You do not wanna over mix cakes and quick breads. Yeasted breads are a totally different story though. That's where kneading comes in. Okay, mix it on low. Keep an eye on it. Totally not finished. We're gonna finish it with a spatula and scrape that bowl down. You're gonna see this batter is a little bit thicker than you might be used to. Don't panic. It's okay. It'll all work out. It's supposed to be that way. So it's mix, mix, mix. And this, by the way, is the consistency of the batter. Just so you see. Thick. We're gonna take this off. Oh boy. And switch over to our pan now. It's time to assemble. Aren't you excited? I'm gonna use a nine by nine baking dish. I found that was perfect for this recipe, but an eight by eight will work too. If you have a little bit of extra batter, make a couple muffins. You will thank me later. Okay, so I lined my baking tin with just a square of parchment paper. I like to snip, snip, snip, snip. Fold, fold, fold. And it goes right in there. It makes releasing so easy. Like cleaning the dish is super fast. Take half of your batter and spread it gingerly into your baking dish. You can eyeball half. Don't worry about weighing it, of course. This is the only part that gets tricky, I promise. Because if you're using the paper, it'll slide around a bit. So just hold one edge and use a spatula or whatever to spread it out. And it doesn't have to be totally even. You just want to get like a nice coverage. This recipe makes just enough batter for a nine by nine inch dish, in my opinion. So don't go crazy eating raw cake batter. We don't have extras. So my twins Lachlan and George are about to turn three tomorrow. I'm making this at night, the evening before their birthday. And Lachlan requested a chocolate cake, but George asked for a muffin cake. Did a little research. I'd never heard of a muffin cake before, but I thought, you know what? A streusel topped coffee cake will be like the most amazing muffin he's ever had. I'm gonna stick some candles on it. It'll be amazing. Okay, mostly covered on the bottom. Now we're gonna add our delicious cinnamon filling. This is gonna be so good. I recipe tested this, of course. I felt like the cinnamon filling was definitely a must have. So just liberally spread it over. You can get it into the edges and whatever else. And you could even, I'm gonna save a little bit actually. Save a little bit and spread it out on top, underneath the streusel. Okay, get the rest of your cake batter and just transfer it over. This isn't tricky per se, but just follow this step. Start in the middle and work your way out because there's this kind of like sandy cinnamon layer in between. It will melt after baking, but right now it'll just kind of like lift up the top layer if you pull it apart. When you make this recipe, it'll all make sense. Wait, since I told you the story about George and his birthday cake, I have to tell you, I made a swap out for this. So at the end of the video, we're gonna move to a swap out. I'm not gonna eat his birthday cake. I would not do that to him. It's one I made for photography. Okay, if you're like me, you'll need to give your hands a quick wash before you move on to the final step. So wash, wash, wash. The final step, this delicious streusel top. Oh my gosh. I would eat this just like this. Liberally sprinkle it on, just throw it on top of there. And let me tell you, if you get streusel into the corner, like if it goes all the way down, like up the side, it's like a crunchy, crispy, amazing treat. It's so good. I normally like cakes that have like a super soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture, but with a coffee cake like this, I love the contrast of the streusel topping, the crunchy edges, and the middle words. It's like, ah, amazing. Okay, get in any gaps you might have missed. There, oh my gosh, this looks amazing. This is gonna go into the oven at 350, and let me tell you something before you put it in there. Some people's ovens run hot, some people's run cold. I have a theory that electric ovens heat totally different from a gas oven. So you know your oven, you're gonna bake this for around 50 minutes, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more, like plus or minus five or so minutes, but just check the center with a skewer. It should come out pretty clean. It shouldn't like sink at all when you touch it. Springy to the touch. Okay, in you go, middle rack. As promised, my swap-out is ready, so let's have a bite. But before we do, if you like this recipe, check out my cake playlist. Tons of cakes that you are bound to enjoy. Now it's time for a bite. Ooh, that topping's so crunchy. That right there is a perfect coffee cake. Let me just tell you, I really hope you get to make this recipe, and if you like this recipe, hit that like button and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video.