It’s fun finding recipes online. It’s fun finding baking tips. It’s not fun scrolling through 10 paragraphs of someone’s back story to get to them. So, without further babbling, here are some tricks bakers use to make coffee cakes amazing, followed by the recipe. (No life-story reading necessary.)
Tips:
1 – Use fresh baking powder. The old stuff loses its oomph. Toss it.
2 – Unless you need more moisture, you can substitute raw sugar or that lovely tan, organic sugar for brown sugar. News flash – it still has the molasses (AKA: down-home deliciousness) in it because the company didn’t suck it out to make retina-burning white sugar and resell the molasses separately. You can use white sugar in this recipe, but it won’t have as much flavor.
3 – If you are not a fan of vegetable oil (which is mostly soy), you can sub avocado or grapeseed oil, or melted butter
4 – For this recipe, if you don’t want to buy an entire carton of buttermilk, make sour milk by adding milk to 1 tablespoon white vinegar in a glass measuring cup until it reaches 2/3 cup. Let it sit for a few minutes..
5 – Use cold butter for the streusel. Don’t even get it from the fridge until after the cake batter is mixed. Then cut it into chunks for easier blending.
Ingredients
Cake
1 1/2 cups (177g) Gluten-Free 1-to-1 flour
2 teaspoons fresh baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated or raw sugar
1/4 cup oil
2 large eggs
2/3 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Streusel Topping
2/3 cup gluten-free 1-to-1 flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup brown sugar or raw sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon, or more
6 tablespoons cold butter
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease an 8” square pan. (You can use a 9” pan, but reduce the baking about 5 minutes.)
To make the batter (big bowl): whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together. Make a well in the dry ingredients by pushing them to the sides. Add eggs and whisk a little to break them up, then oil, milk or buttermilk, and vanilla. Whisk until blended. The batter should be thick. Spread into the prepared pan.
Then make the streusel (small bowl): Mix the flour, sugar, and cinnamon together until evenly blended. Cut the butter into pieces. Use your super clean hands to work in the butter until evenly crumbly. If it seems too smushy and warm, put it in the freezer for 5 minutes. You want it to be cold and crumbly.
Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the batter. Lightly press it onto the batter with your fingers to help it not fall off when cutting.
Bake the cake until a butter knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 28 – 33 minutes (less for a 9” pan.) Remove from the oven, and cool for 15 to 20 minutes before cutting into squares. Stores well, if there’s any left.
