Balsam Woods Blog

While searching the Internet yesterday for a good muffin recipe I came across a recipe called “easy fruit coffee cake” at Tammy’s Recipes.  I wanted to see if it could be a dessert cake and possibly a breakfast treat cake so I made it last night.   We ate it last night for dessert and this morning for breakfast, it was that yummy.   This first time, I tried making it with some fresh blueberries I’d frozen late last summer.  But we both decided it would be fantastic with raspberries, strawberries and especially apples.  Dave liked it so much he wants me to make it for his co-workers for their weekly meeting next week.

I’m going to post the recipe as I made it.  Tammy’s recipe was slightly different and if you want her original just click on Tammy’s Recipes in the paragraph above.

FRUIT COFFEE CAKE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  I used a plain old cast iron skillet with cooking spray, but a greased 8 or 9 inch baking pan is in the original recipe.

BATTER:

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs

14/ cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of fruit (like I said blueberries worked great, raspberries, strawberries and apples would also probably be yummy)

TOPPING:

1/3 cup of all purpose flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter, softened (I used room temperature butter)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

INSTRUCTIONS:

1.  In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and the salt.

2.  In a little bowl using an electric mixer beat the eggs for about 2-3 minutes making them frothy.

3.  Pour the eggs, oil,  milk & vanilla on top of dry mixture and stir until combined.  Fold in fruit.

4.  Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

5.  For the topping, mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon then drop in butter slices.  I used a pastry cutter to mix everything together, but two knives to cut in the butter would work just as well.  You want the topping to have small crumbles of butter throughout.  Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the batter.

6.  Bake for 50-60 minutes.  Mine was done at 50 minutes.  At 40 minutes, I covered the cake with foil because the topping was getting pretty brown.

7.  I served it warm for dessert and cold for breakfast.  Might be really tasty with vanilla ice cream when serves as dessert.

After the cake had cooled in the pan for about 30 minutes and because I used a round cast iron skillet, I was able to put the foil back over the top, flip the cake out upside down and place it right side up on a cake pedestal.  It made a pretty presentation.

I love vegetable beef soup (homemade).  So all day I’ve been tinkering with a lovely crock-pot full of vegetable beef soup.  It was a tad bland so I decided to add some herbs.  And I had a little accident with the jar of thyme right over the crock-pot.   I didn’t dump the whole jar in, but let’s estimate it at about 2 heaping tablespoons.  Arf!  I took a sip almost two hours ago and it tasted horribly thymee (new word).  I’m going to go “doctor” on it, but we might just have to suffer through eating a huge pot of really strongly favored soup.   Major bummer!

In the toolbar section to the right you will see a category for other blogs I like to read.  If you click on Biblical Womanhood today, she’s started a new challenge and I think I’m going to take part in it.   And she’s got a pretty easy cleaning/decluttering task to attend to this week and it goes along with my plans to get my house more organized before the baby arrives.  This week she has challenged folks to clear out all garbage from the entire house.  Since I’ve been down with a nasty cold for a week, my house actually needs to have this done so the timing is great.  Then she says to scan each room for quick stuff we find that can be given away, sold or is a maybe item to get rid of.

All that sounds easy enough and I’ll feel like I’m making headway toward getting the house completely cleaned and organized.  The sun was shining in brightly through our open curtains over the weekend and I got to see just how many cobweb/dust bunnies had accumulated in corners and on the ceiling since this past fall.  These things tend to sneak up on a person.

It is still January and there is still tons of snow on the ground with more to come, but it’s time I get busy on some Spring Cleaning chores.

I’ve read on another’s blog that January 23, 2009 has been designated (by whoever it is that designates these things) as National Pie Day.  I’m not usually one for celebrating all the little odds and ends designated days out there, but who can’t wrap their minds around a day for PIE???

Since I could probably live happily for some time on apple pie, I think I will just have to participate in celebrating pie on Friday.  Hmmm, now that I’m thinkin’…I could easily come up with pie for breakfast, dinner and dessert that day!  Dinner is easy…pot pies.  Breakfast though, I’ll have to look some things up and see what I come up with.  And dessert, that’s a no brainer, APPLE PIE!!!

I suppose I could use this opportunity to hone my pie crust making skills, since I don’t have any, but I will probably cheat and buy one of those Pillsbury pre-made refrigerated pie crusts.  Pie crust scares me.  I have made maybe two pie crusts from scratch and they were both awful.  At the very least, Dave & I will eat some previously frozen Mrs. Smith’s apple pie for dessert on Friday evening!

So have a Happy National Pie Day on Friday!!