Receta Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake
Like many people, we tend to get into ruts where breakfast is concerned. This problem is even worse for non-morning people, like myself, because we are not going to get up earlier–even by 10 minutes–to add cooking time to our morning routine. Nor are we capable of much thought, let alone creativity, for a good hour or 2 after waking. So our breakfasts tend to be very routine and often made ahead of time. My personal favorites are oatmeal and whole grain toast with peanut butter. I wake up craving sweet carbs, I won’t lie.
So anyway, when Alex complained that she was tired of our current breakfasts (you can add eggs for the mornings John feeds them), it was hard to blame her. John started talking about English muffins and bagels, at which point I declared I’d rather have a homemade whole grain cake with fruit than commercial bagels and English muffins (not because they are bad, but rather because they are certainly not any healthier in which case I can get a lot more excited about a streusel topped homemade cake). And into the kitchen I went.
I had been staring at this cake in Lou Seibert Pappas’s Coffee Cakes: Simple, Sweet and Savory for quite some time; remembering that it was made with whole wheat flour it seemed like a great place to start–and the search ended there as well. I made a few adjustments, white whole wheat flour for regular whole wheat, pecans for walnuts, basically just changing things around to our personal taste. The cake was a huge hit; I borrowed a trick from my mother’s book and had the girls eat a spoonful of peanut butter (for protein) before heading to school. We were all sad when it was gone, especially because we are almost out of local blueberries since we were not home last summer to freeze any.
Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake
Closely adapted from Lou Seibert Pappas
For the streusel:
- 2 T cold, unsalted butter, diced
- 2 T AP flour
- 2 T white whole wheat flour
- 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
- 2 t Ceylon cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 1 cup (4 oz) pecans, chopped
- For the cake:
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 t vanilla
- 1 cup AP flour
- 1 cup white whole wheat flour
- 1 t baking powder
- 1 t baking soda
- 1/4 t fine sea salt
- 1 cup buttermilk (Pappas says you can also use low fat yogurt)
- 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (I recommend only using fresh in season), do not thaw if frozen
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a 9-inch springform pan with an oil/flour combo, such as Baker’s Joy. Set aside.
First make the streusel: whisk together the flours, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Using your hands, rub the butter into the flour mixture. Add the pecans and continue to mix with your hands until it is a crumbly mixture, the butter pieces no larger than the size of a pea. Set aside.
For the cake, begin by whisking together the flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Using a whisk or hand mixer, mix together the oil, sugars, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk in 3 and 2 alternating increments, respectively, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat until smooth.
Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan. Scatter the blueberries over the batter (adding them this way will prevent the berries from sinking too much). Sprinkle the streusel topping over the top of the batter.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, the cake pulls away from the edge of the pan, and a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes, then remove the sides of the pan. Let cool completely.