Saturday, June 16, 2012

A Very Berry Blackheart Coffee Cake

Things have been super crazy around my house in the past month. Last night I finally had the mental breakdown that had been looming for weeks. Tears were shed, words were had, and BlueBell's Red Velvet Cake was consumed. Then miraculously I woke in an amazing mood. Does anyone see this bi-polar behaviour besides me? Anyhow, I am in my best form today and I have been busy!

Last weekend Blackheart and I had a whole evening to ourselves. We planned going out to a bar, hanging out with all our old friends who didn't have kids, and staying up as late as possible. So of course we got coffee to keep us awake past 8:30. Since then, we've both been a little obsessed. I missed having someone give me dirty looks while I was ordering a very expensive coffee, and having them send  me their negative views of who I am as a person determined by what I just ordered. Blackheart just missed tasty coffee. So the other day, we both get coffee separately, but from the same place. And he gets our lovely little ones the very berry coffee cake to hold them through the 5 minute round trip from our house to the coffee shop. BIG MISTAKE! I haven't stopped hearing about coffee cake since. I mean seriously, anything that could get Rose to stop talking about her birthday for almost two days was welcomed, but now I realize it was just a replacement. So what's a mom to do. Google a Very Berry Coffee Cake Recipe! So I got this from Chef In You. Now Chef in you generally has substitutions to make it vegetarian or vegan. Stuff that I appreciate, but don't actually follow. So I'm going to change it all to use butter, milk, eggs, and all that. Now take note, I had to increase my bake time by 15 minutes. I'm not sure if her oven is off, but others commented that they had the same problem.

Alright, alright, enough of my chit chat. Let's make coffee cake. Yummy!

This takes about an hour and a half total to cook, so give yourself some time.

What you'll need:

Ingredients:

Coffee Cake
1 1/2 Cups of sifted all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon zest
3 tbsp low fat sour cream
1/2 cup milk (whatever you have)
Total of a 1 1/2 of berries, (I used 1/2 cup of blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries

Crumb Topping
3 tbsp cold butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1tsp ground cinnamon

Items you'll need:

A mixer
2 large bowls (3 if you don't like to wash)
a fork
a spatula
an  8x8 baking pan
strainer
metal whisk

Instructions, or what I like to call guidelines:

Preheat oven to 350

Grease the bottom of the baking pan. (I used an olive oil spritzer I have made instead of PAM

Sift the flour and mix with the baking powder and salt.
Whisk the dry ingredients

Beat the butter and the sugar until they are fluffy.
 My little helpers
Add the eggs until thoroughly mixed (It looks like grits to me at this point.)
Add the vanilla, lemon zest and the sour cream. Mix well.


Add 1/2 of the flour mixture, add the milk, add the remaining flour mixture

 Mix well
It almost looks like icing. Yum.
Put half the batter into the baking pan.

Rinse your berries
Lay the berries into the batter
Add the remainder of the batter on top of the berries
Make the topping. Here's the ingredients, just so we don't have to scroll up.

Crumb Topping
3 tbsp cold butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1tsp ground cinnamon

Mix all dry ingredients then use a fork to work butter into the sugar mixture.


My topping failed miserably because the butter was too warm, but it all worked out in the end.

Bake for 40 minutes, check for browning and if it's browning too much cover with aluminum foil.

Bake an additional 10 minutes. Add 5 minutes of bake time if it's not done.

The Very Berry Coffee cake came out awesome!, but I did have some difficulty getting the bake time correct. The girls really did help with this one, and they were so proud when they got to eat their coffee cake. Their smiles and yums were worth every mintue. Hope yours turns out as good for you!


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