Baked Sunday Mornings: New York Style Crumb Cake

Happy Easter! I hope everyone is having a great day. I'm going to talk about a coffee cake that would actually be very appropriate for a holiday, especially if you're having houseguests over. Unfortunately, my coffee cake is long, long gone and will not be served this Easter. But who knows, maybe next year!

So for this week's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment, we made the New York Style Crumb Cake, which I've been drooling over ever since I first purchased this book. You see, this cake reminds me of the good ol' days, when I used to work at Starbucks. The New York Style Crumb Cake was so good there, but so evil. The crumb portion was thicker than the cake portion, which I quickly learned was why people loved it so much. But me? No, I actually preferred the cake to the crumb. I always wound up with a stomachache if I attempted to eat the entire piece of cake.

Well, after trying the Baked version of this cake, I can see why people love the crumbs so much. This coffee cake puts the Starbucks cake to shame. The cake is so moist and light, while somehow also being hefty enough to pass for breakfast food. The crumb topping is nothing short of amazing. It smells of heaven: cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter. I pretty much swooned when I finally took this thing out of the oven. I was originally going to cut this into squares, try a little piece, and send it in to work with my husband. However, once I started cutting, little crumbs started to fall off the cake. I tried one. Then another. Then another. So only a few pieces made it to the office; the rest were thoroughly enjoyed by myself and my two sons.

I have to say that it really is so worth the effort, the way you assemble the crumb top. I did what the book advised, and let the crumbs lay out after the ingredients had all been mixed in. By slightly drying them out, they were very easy to break off into chunks and scatter across the cake batter. After being baked, those crumbs were decadent, sinful, and addictive. I'm definitely a New York Crumb Cake convert!

I can't wait to see how the other Baked Sunday Morning members' cakes turned out! We have such great photographers in the group; I know that looking through all the pictures will just make me crave this cake all over again! You can check them out by clicking here for the blogroll.