Hello, folks. I’m not feeling too chatty at the moment. Sadly my grandmother (my dad’s mom) passed away earlier this week. She lived a long life (over 90 years) and thankfully did not experience a debilitating and drawn out illness. My husband and I will be heading up north for the funeral and to be with family, so I’ll be unable to answer your comments and questions for a few days. You will, of course, have Chef Edwin available to answer all your DinnerCakes needs.

In times of stress I’m grateful that I can turn to baking to relax me; I can get into the rhythm and let stress (usually) melt away. I was able to squeeze in a crumb cake this week, inspired by a beautiful “big crumb coffee cake” found on Smitten Kitchen.

The Smitten recipe calls for a rhubarb filling that frankly made me a little nervous. I decided to replace it with a Cinnabon/cinnamon roll filling which worked out really well. It kept the cake moist (I’ve known some crumb cakes to be sadly dry) and gave it a little depth of flavor. I use the past tense because the cake is now gone.

Cinnacrumb Cake

For the cake and big crumb recipe, please see Smitten Kitchen.

Leave out the rhubarb filling and replace it with the following –
Cinnabon/cinnamon roll filling
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
dash allspice
1 tablespoon ground pecans

Follow Smitten’s instructions for the cake. Pour half the batter into a prepared 8-inch-square baking pan (I lined mine with parchment paper). Combine the cinnamon filling ingredients and sprinkle over the batter and try to spread it out evenly. Using a toothpick, marble the cinnamon mixture into the batter. Finish by pouring the rest of the batter on top and sprinkle with crumbs in large chunks.

On my cake, the cinnamon mixture bubbled up over top of the crumbs a little bit in one corner. I was fine with this, but if it will bother you then you may want to cut the cinnamon filling in half.

Bake for about 50 minutes on 325F; a toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean.

Enjoy.

Tags: baking, breakfast, cake

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.