Apple Coffee Cake

I love me some coffee cake. Like, seriously. I could have it for breakfast every day if fitting into my clothes wasn’t a real priority in my life. But it is so unfortunately, I don’t.

I also like to shake up the classic coffee cake once in a while, and this week I was feeling it. Nothing too drastic, but adding apples to the recipe certainly works. This way, I can tell myself how healthy it is, and definitely eat it for breakfast.

Because an apple coffee cake a day keeps the doctor away (I think I heard that somewhere…)

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

Cake

¾ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup butter, softened to room temperature
¼ cup sugar
3 eggs, brought to room temperature
3 t vanilla
1 ¾ cups flour
2 t cinnamon
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
¼ t salt
1 cup sour cream
3 cups peeled, chopped apples (Depending on how big they are, you’re just talking about 2 or 3 apples. For this I used Granny Smith but other good choices are Honeycrisp and Golden Delicious, or even a combination.)

Toppings

½ cup flour
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup rolled oats
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1 t cinnamon
¼ cup butter, cold
¾ cup powdered sugar
1 T milk
1 t vanilla

Directions

Butter and flour and an 8” or 9” baking pan and set that aside.

In a large bowl, put the brown sugar, butter and regular sugar and beat until smooth, just a couple minutes. Add in the eggs and vanilla beat again (on low) until everything is well combined and set this bowl aside.

In a separate bowl put the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt and whisk until well combined. Get your bowl with the sugar mixture and add in half this flour mixture and mix until just combined. Next, add half the sour cream and mix again. Then mix in the rest of the flour mixture and finally add in the rest of the sour cream and mix that until everything is just combined. Put aside your mixer – you’re done with that.

Add the apples to the batter and, with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, carefully combine them.

Now we’re going to make the topping/streusel. Use the ingredients list from “Toppings” above.

In a medium bowl put the four, brown sugar, oats, pecans and cinnamon and whisk until well combined. Take your butter and cut it into small cubes and add that to the bowl. Now get in there with your hands and smoosh everything together. You want to get the butter pretty well distributed and the overall mixture kind of crumbly. It’s ok if there are still some visible bits of butter when you’re done.

And don’t worry – we’ll deal with the last three topping ingredients later.

Pour half of the original batter into your prepared baking pan, and drop it on the counter a couple times to smooth it out. Next, cover that with half of the topping mixture. Then pour on the remaining half of the batter, followed by the remaining half of the topping.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the edges are a nice golden brown. Move to a wire rack to cool.

While the cake is cooling, add the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla to a small bowl and mix until you get a nice icing. Note that you may need to add a little more milk to get it the consistency you want, but when I say little I definitely mean JUST a little. Drizzle the icing over the cake (this is one of the instances where the cake can still be warm, but it doesn’t have to be). And this cake is great served warm or cold!