Welcome Winter Coffee Cake

Tomorrow, December 21, brings the winter solstice. To be clear, I am not a fan of winter (too cold, too dark, too long), but I am a fan of baking up something to warm your house and heart. And this coffee cake is just the ticket. 

I’ve been making this for years and cannot believe I never wrote about it! A man named Jack gave my husband this recipe years ago - hence the recipe’s real name: Jack’s Jewish Coffee Cake. It makes a large cake (9x13) but if you’re thinking that in quarantine it’s too big and you’d have no one to share it with, not to worry - it freezes like a dream. So do as I do - bake it up, enjoy one (or two - we don’t judge) squares with a warm cup of coffee or tea, then cut it up into portions, wrap well (in plastic wrap and a Zip-lock bag), and store in the freezer. Then when you’re in need of some deliciousness, just reach into your freezer, pull out a portion, and in an hour or so, it will be ready to enjoy.

This cake has all the feels - a cinnamon-nutty streusel (both on top and in the middle), a moist sour cream base (resulting in a very tender crumb), and fills your house with an incredible aroma while baking. Just what the doctor ordered to lift our spirits through the winter.

Wishing you a healthy winter season! 

Jack’s Jewish Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

Cake:

1/2 lb butter

2 C sugar (can reduce to 1-1/4 C if needed)

2 t vanilla

4 large eggs

4 C flour

3 t baking powder

2 t baking soda

1 pint sour cream

Streusel:

1 C chopped walnuts

1 C sugar

1 TB cinnamon

Directions:

1. Grease and flour 9x13x2” pan
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. With electric mixer, cream together butter, sugar and vanilla.
4. Add the eggs and beat for 2 minutes.
5. In a separa
6. 
   
7. te bowl, sif
8. t together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
9. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.
10. Add sour cream and beat for approximately 2 minutes.
11. In a small bowl, stir together the chopped walnuts, cinnamon, and sugar for the streusel.
12. Put half of the batter into the prepared pan, then sprinkle with half of the streusel. Pour the rest of the batter on top, smooth out, then sprinkle the remaining streusel on top.
13. Bake for approximately 50-60 minutes (if your oven runs hot, check it at 45 minutes*). A cake tester should come out clean (or if using a thermometer, cake should register approximately 190-200F).

* In our previous home, my Wolf oven was very accurate and I almost never worried about over-baking cakes. But in this oven, I’ve found things over-bake quite easily. So I just bought a fabulous instant-read thermometer after the one we had for years died. The Thermapen MK4 is incredible - why did I wait so long to buy a “real” instant-read?! It’s a bit pricey, but we’ve now used it for everything from cake to steak to chicken and it’s hands-down the best instant-read we’ve ever had. They have other less expensive models, but this one gives you super-fast 2-3 second reads, is waterproof, has a backlight, an auto-rotating display, and a motion-sensing sleep/wake mode. And if you needed anymore evidence, it was rated #1 by America's Test Kitchen. 

And, no, I’m not getting any compensation for my glowing review; I just wanted you to share in my joy! 

Brown Sugar Plum Cake

Before diving into this wonderful recipe, I must apologize for being AWOL the last month or so. I broke my wrist at the end of August & am still recovering. This accident definitely impeded my writing/typing ability. Even now, I am typing using the old "hunt and peck" method, which takes FOREVER and is a bit painful so this will be short post. 

But one must soldier on so here I am with a fabulous fall recipe for you. Regular Cook's Tour readers will recall that at this time of year, I almost always make my late mother-in-law's plum cake but Italian prune plums are not always available so I thought I'd give you another equally-good option. This recipe uses regular plums, which you can get anywhere. I baked this before breaking my wrist because baking is definitely out of the question for awhile!

Wishing you a healthy and delicious fall season!

Brown Sugar Plum Cake with Sour Cream (adapted from Honest Cooking)

Ingredients:

1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter - room temp

1-1/2 C + 2 TB AP flour

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

1/2 C packed light brown sugar

1/2 C granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 t vanilla extract

1/4 C sour cream

4 plums, halved, pitted, and cut into eighths

Confectioner's sugar for dusting

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Grease 9" round cake pan lined with parchment (note: I skipped the parchment and sprinkled a bit of granulated sugar after greasing the pan to add a bit more sweetness and a little crunch.)

3. Using electric mixer, beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy

4. In separate large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt

5. With mixer on low, beat in eggs one at a time until incorporated

6. Beat in vanilla

7. Add in half of flour mixture, then sour cream, followed by rest of the flour. Mix until just combined.

8. Spread batter in pan and smooth top with knife or spatula.

9. Arrange plums on top.

10. Bake 35-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely.

11. Dust with Confectioner's sugar before serving.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger

Greetings!

I hope you are all healthy and doing well.

Like everyone else on the planet, we’ve been cooking and baking more than usual. Finding all-purpose flour during the early days of the pandemic was nearly impossible (forget about finding bread flour here in Puerto Rico). Now it seems the supply lines have been fortified and I can get all the AP flour I want. So this week, with quickly ripening bananas on my counter I set out to bake banana bread. But I wanted something a little different, and I found it in Molly Wizenberg’s (a terrific food writer) recipe from a few years back. She adds finely chopped crystallized ginger and that takes this banana bread from really good to WOW! It adds a dimension of spicy-sweetness and moisture you would otherwise not get. If you can’t get crystallized ginger, you could sub in ground ginger (use an 1/8 teaspoon of ground ginger for every tablespoon of crystallized ginger; you may need to add sugar, to taste, to compensate), but you won’t get that delicious gingery chewiness. 

You’ll notice the recipe calls for whole-milk yogurt (not low or nonfat); I could not find it anywhere so I used nonfat yogurt. Full fat yogurt will probably give you a more moist bread, but I did not find this version to be lacking in moistness (or anything) at all.

Try this recipe, I think you’ll really enjoy it!

Be well, stay healthy, stay safe.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger (Molly Wizenberg)

Makes 1 9x5” loaf or 1 8” round cake

Ingredients:

6 TB unsalted butter

2 C all-purpose flour

3/4 C sugar

3/4 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

3/4 C semisweet chocolate chips

1/3 C finely chopped crystallized ginger

2 large eggs

3 large ripe bananas, mashed

1/4 C well-stirred whole-milk plain yogurt (not low or nonfat)

1 t vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Set a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat to 350F. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan or an 8-inch round cake pan with cooking spray or butter.

2. Melt the butter on the stove or in a microwave and set aside to cool slightly.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate chips and crystallized ginger and whisk well to combine. Set aside.

4. In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Add the mashed banana, yogurt, melted butter, and vanilla and stir to mix well. Pour the banana mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir gently with a rubber spatula, scraping down the sides as needed, until just combined. Do not overmix. The batter with be thick and somewhat lumpy, just make sure all the flour has been incorporated. Scrape the batter into the loaf pan and smooth the top.

5. Bake into the loaf is a deep shade of golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50 mins to an hour. If the loaf seems to be browning too quickly, tent with foil.

6. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Then tip out onto the rack, and let it cool completely before slicing. The loaf freezes well wrapped in plastic wrap and again in foil to protect from freezer burn.