Apple Coffee Cake

This is a recipe from Grandma's recipe box that I made a lot of changes to. The first time I tried to make it, there was no milk in the recipe. The paste it made was much closer to noodle dough than cake batter. As long as I had already made one change, it made sense to keep going until I had what is easily my favorite fruit coffee cake recipe of all time. You can substitute pears or peaches for the apples. I've never tried it, but I bet raisins would taste great.

I justify using almost a whole stick of butter (over 1 Tb per serving) by saying that there's a lot of real fruit in it. Oh, like that makes a difference!


Cake

1 C flour
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 C melted butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 C milk
2 apples, chopped into bite-sized pieces (I do 1/2" dice)
oatmeal streusel (see below)

1. Butter an 8" square or 9" round cake pan. Preheat oven to 350º.

2. Sift together dry ingredients.

3. Combine egg, butter, and milk, and add to dry ingredients to make a thick batter. Stir in half the apples. DO NOT add any more milk to thin out the batter. A lot of moisture will cook out of the fruit, and you have to consider that as part of the liquid ingredients.

4. Spread mixture in pan. Sprinkle top with remaining apple chunks. Top with streusel.

5. Bake for 50 minutes. Turn off oven and let sit for 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and cool slightly before serving.

Serves 6


Oatmeal Streusel

1/4 C flour
1/4 C quick oats
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 Tb sugar
3 Tb butter

1. Stir together flour, sugar, cinnamon, and oats.

2. Cut in butter to make coarse crumbs.

Difficulty rating  :)