Heavenly Cake Baker: Chocolate Streusel Coffee Cake (free choice)

This week's Heavenly Cake Baker cake was a free choice. I chose the Chocolate Streusel Coffee Cake on page 55 of Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The cake itself was delicious. Very moist, not too sweet, with a light vanilla flavor. The addition of the sour cream gave the cake some depth of flavor as well - yum! The ring of chocolate was a great addition and gave it some interest when sliced.

There are, however, a few things I'd change next time. I am not a fan of chocolate and cinnamon together, and - knowing this about myself - I should have omitted the cinnamon or used another flavor. I chose to follow the recipe to the letter though and, yep, I still don't like chocolate and cinnamon together. I think an extract or liqueur, some lemon or orange zest, or some ground almonds or pecans would go very well instead of the cinnamon. I'll give that a try next time (a ring of ganache would also be really good instead...I wonder how that would bake up). The other thing about the chocolate ring that didn't turn out as expected/desired was that the texture was very grainy - but this may have been because I didn't have Muscovado brown sugar, so I used regular brown sugar. I think using Muscovado, which has a finer texture, would probably have solved this issue.

So, overall, with a few small changes, this recipe is a keeper.

mise en place for the cake...so simple!

the chocolate filling

adding the eggs

pretty batter - so light and fluffy

a bit of batter goes into the pan

then the ring of chocolate and the rest of the batter

into the oven now...

smells so delicious!

hey! There's chocolate inside. Yum.

such a nice, tender crumb

Bye for now...