Strawberry Coffeecake with Cinnamon Crunch Topping

34 CommentsMonday • March 15, 2010 • by Ari

I had myself a bit of a baking bonanza this afternoon, making not one, but two goodies in the kitchen. I didn’t plan to do so much baking, but I was whipping up a batch of to-die-for blueberry muffins (photo/recipe coming soon) and had a bunch of leftover topping. What to do? Well I could have tossed the topping, that’s true. But it seemed like such a shame to waste that brown sugar, cinnamon and butter… So I did the most logical thing and made a coffeecake. Strawberry coffeecake. Which not only used up all that extra topping (there was a lot!) but also gave me the opportunity to put some very ripe strawberries in my fridge to use while finishing off my ricotta and sour cream to boot.

You see, I was going to make a yogurt coffeecake. Then I realized I didn’t have any yogurt or enough sour cream to substitute. Doh! My plans were almost foiled,  until I saw a carton of ricotta cheese and remembered @Stacerella telling me she liked to bake with it. I thought, why not? And when there wasn’t enough ricotta to round off the dairy, I added some whole milk in there too. Come to think of it, maybe I should have called this “kitchen sink coffeecake”… or “use whatever dairy you got coffeecake.”

Whatever it’s called, the end result was pretty darn good. I’ll definitely be enjoying a slice tomorrow morning with my wake-the-heck-up cup of coffee. The cake has a fluffy crumb that’s nicely contrasted by the crunchy cinnamon topping. If you don’t want to use my eclectic mix of dairy products you can use all ricotta or all yogurt or all sour cream. I imagine blueberries would also be nice in this batter.

Well, I would write more but fussy wussy (a.k.a. my son) just woke up and is calling for me demanding my attention. Stat! He is almost 2 months old now and this is what he looks like when he’s not being a fussapotamus. But hey look, I got a blog post up! With a recipe and two half-decent photos too! Go me.

Please say hello in the comments so I can engage in some adult conversation and avoid writing my next post in baby talk. Unless you want that to happen… but it won’t be pretty.

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