“Ooh, an emulsion! Tell me what happens when you whisk the oil and egg. I think it’s very exciting and it’s one of my favorite things to watch when I’m cooking or baking. You are making an emulsion. Watch it.” I said those things when the girls and I made coffee cakes in our separate locations on Friday afternoon. Science. Chemistry.
I didn’t choose the easiest of my coffee cake recipes for the girls because I plot and scheme ahead of time in dividing tasks. One was making the crumble while the other was peeling and chopping apple. One gathered ingredients and measured while one said it could certainly be done more tidily because now the ants were going to come in the kitchen and find the spilled brown sugar. Sisters in the kitchen.
They will obviously know how to make a plain coffee cake (and who my age and our kids didn’t grow up with the vanilla cake version, a cinnamon crumble on top and sometimes with crumble in the middle?) and now they know how to make crumble and a lovely cake with chopped apple added to the dry ingredients. Blueberries are likely to make an entrance in their repertoire, and then maybe some mock Boston Creme Pie. Who knows?
The girls made my recipe for Cinnamon Apple Coffee Cake* not with a glaze but with crumble on the top (which their mother told me today was perfect and crunchy at breakfast.) I opted not to have them attempt a layer of the crumble in the middle. The baking powder doesn’t want to wait the first time for a lot of careful spooning.
I tossed a couple big handfulls of frozen cranberries into the dry ingredients and some fresh orange juice into the liquid ingredients when I made my own. I confess to readers that I was craving cranberries, so made it a few days ago and froze individual pieces except for a couple. I freeze a gallon of cranberries every winter so that I can put them in cakes. Sour and sweet and lots of health benefits. Plus: cake for breakfast!
*The cinnamon apple coffee cake recipe is in the first link below. The crumble recipe is in the second link and probably others. I used Search for “coffee cake” here and decided on the cranberry orange although that day I used a different form of cranberry.
https://mschefinseattle.com/2019/11/17/apple-coffee-cake-with-cinnamon-glaze-my-recipe/
https://mschefinseattle.com/2019/05/21/cranberry-orange-coffee-cake/
Ms Chef in Seattle 