Tuesday, June 14, 2011

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

heavenlycakeplace 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...

5 comments:

  1. A nice crumb indeed! And I really love that pan :o) You could just omit the cinnamon all together without replacing it with something else. I'm sure that would work. If you ever try the ganache filling instead, let me know how it bakes up. I'm curious too :o)

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  2. How lovely it turned out! Looks just gorgeous in this pan.

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  3. your cake looks so moist! this was one of my favorites. i think orange zest would be a wonderful substitute. i remember the streusel filling was a bit crunchy which i thought was a nice textural contrast. (i did use muscovado--do try it next time, the flavor is amazing!)

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  4. Very nice process photo, Alice. I'm not a big fan of chocolate and cinnamon together either.

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  5. i love the idea of using pecans! it looks really great.

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