coffee cake, apple and otherwise

The wonderful thing about cooking is that nothing is set in stone.  Other than the set things like baking soda, baking powder, amounts of flour, and so on, you are really free to play and have fun.  Ask yourself the “What does my mouth feel like?“ kind of questions.  I think many people when faced with a cookbook, get gripped with fear.  Like there is a wrong way and a right way and if you don’t do everything exactly so, you’re screwed.  Not true. 
Take my “Blueberry muffin” recipe.  That’s the batter from a coffee cake I like to make.  If you feel like delicious coffee cake instead of blueberry muffins this is what you do.

Meg’s Apple Coffee Cake
Heat oven to 375* Grease (with butter of course) an 8 x8 cake pan, or a bunt cake pan, or a bread loaf pan (you see what I mean, you can really do whatever you like)
Use the batter recipe for the Blueberry Muffins, EXCEPT omit the blueberries and add to the flour mixture
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
3-4 dashes of nutmeg
Then cut up:
1 apple peeled and diced into little chunks around the size of your baby fingernail (smaller than your baby fingernail for those of you who have fabulous long ones)
Add the liquid mixture to the flour mixture with the diced apple, (do not over mix, just stir blended and all the flour mixture is mixed)  Then scrape into your baking pan.
In a separate bowl cut together:
One handful of flour
two handfuls of brown sugar
one handful of white sugar
around ten shakes of cinnamon
3-5 tablespoons of butter (depending on how big your hands are)
Sprinkle this mixture on top of the cake batter, pop the whole thing in the oven and wait.  The cooking time will vary depending on what kind of pan you used, as well as the accuracy of your oven.  The coffee cake will be done when a fork, straw, or kebab skewer is poked into the middle of the cake and comes out clean.

To make this in to a regular Pecan Coffee Cake which is sort of the like the original recipe I started making many years ago.
Leave out the cinnamon, nutmeg and apple in the recipe for the batter and mince a cup of pecans and add them to the topping mixture.  Serve with pipping hot.  Make sure you have butter on the table, because I always like to tuck a little pat of it inside my piece of cake to make it truly decadent!

Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, September 15, 2007 in Recipes