Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Coffee Coffeecake

Why doesn't coffeecake have coffee in it? Well, this one does.

The current challenge over at 37Cooks is sponsored by Lock N Load, a veteran-owned coffee company, and this time around I decided to turn my attention to coffeecake.

I received two different Lock N Load coffees to work with, Task Force Zulu Single Origin Costa Rican and Armory Select Southern Pecan. And lucky, you, I made two different recipes - one with each coffee.

This time around, I used the Southern Pecan coffee. It made perfect sense since the coffeecake included nuts. The original recipe used walnuts, but I changed that to pecans to match the coffee, and I made other slight changes.

You can see the original recipe here.

Pecan Streusel Coffee Coffeecake
Adapted from Kosher by Design by Susie Fishbein (recipe for Walnut Streusel Coffee Cake)
Recipe © by www.cookistry.com. Do not republish without permission.
Pecan Graham Streusel:
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons melted butter

Topping:
1/4 cup pecans, roughly chaopped
1/3 cup sugar
4 tablespoons room temperature butter
6 tablespoons all purpose flour

Cake:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/3 cup canola oil
3 large eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup brewed strong coffee, cooled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9x13 baking pan with baking spray.

For the streusel topping:
In a small bowl, combine the ingredients for the streusel topping. Stir well and set aside.

For the crumb topping:
In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, butter, and flour. Mash with a fork until combined. It should form a mass, but still fall apart in bits rather than clumping together in a wet blob. Add another tablespoon of flour if it's wet.

For the cake:
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl, and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and oil until it's creamy. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.

Lower the speed and add the flour mixture. Raise the speed and beat until you have a smooth batter, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Lower the speed and beat in the cream, coffee, vanilla extract, and almond extract.

Spread half of the cake batter in the prepared pan and smooth out the surface. Add the pecan streusel evenly over the batter. Add the rest of the batter, and smooth the top.

Scatter the pecans over the top of the cake

Break the crumb topping into bits and scatter them over the pecans.

Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, or with moist crumbs.

Cool the cake completely before cutting.

You can find out more about Lock N Load on their Facebook page. I was supplied with coffee to use for these recipes through 37Cooks.
Yum