Easy Coffee Cake

Easy Coffee Cake

printable version

This recipe is attributed to (mom) meaning my grandma, Sophie. 

I decided to make this on a rainy Saturday morning.  I checked the night before that I had all the ingredients.  But it didn't occur to me that creaming the butter and sugar would best be done with semi-soft butter.  So I used a favorite tip - put the butter in the oven while it pre-heats.

  But keep an eye on it so it doesn't melt.  I let mine go a minute too long, but it still came out okay.

Since I'm making this for my family to eat - I'm going to use the better quality ingredients I prefer such as cane sugar and unbleached flour.

  Since I began thinking about the food I eat I decided I don't really want to eat trace amounts of bleach.

I laid out all the ingredients before I started - just like I learned to do in homemaking class but almost never actually do.

My mom taught me that when adding liquid ingredients, after you dump them in the bowl, put the measuring cup (or in this case small glass bowl where I beat the egg) at an angle so that all the leftover in the bowl runs into one spot and then you can add that into your batter too.

Well, I thought I had all the ingredients laid out.  I forgot about the melted butter and greasing the pan.  Since I only made half a recipe I didn't want to have half a cube (I assume this means 1 TBSP) so I scooped out some butter from my spreadable butter container, put it in the same bowl that I had used to beat the egg, and put it in the oven while I greased the pan.  That was the perfect amount of time.

When I poured the butter on I also rolled the pan around a bit to spread it more evenly.  I only put nuts on 1/4 of the pan because others in my house don't like nuts in their food.  Notice I used an 8x8 pan since I only made half a recipe.

  I still baked it for the full 30  minutes.

I felt like the flavor balance was just perfect.  The cake bordered on dry but didn't reach the dry level.
People in my house like icing so I put a container of white icing on the table which they spread on their pieces.  I tried two bites plain and enjoyed it.  I tried my third bit with the icing.  It was nice too - it only needed a very light coat.  But I wanted to stay true to the recipe so I ate the rest without icing.  The first couple of bites seemed lonely but then I got used to it plain again.  You might also try a powdered sugar glaze - again just a light covering.