I bake pretty frequently, but am by no means an expert. Normally I bring my creations in to work to share with coworkers, but since COVID-19, I've been unable to share beyond an instagram post. So why not a Cortex post? Below is my experience making Coffee Coffee Cake from Dessert People by Claire Saffitz.
First, I'll admit this recipe requires a lot. A lot of ingredients (some of which folks might not keep stocked, like cardamom or sour cream) and a lot of mixing bowls. Through the course of this recipe I used two medium mixing bowls, two small mixing bowls, and one mixer bowl. If you don't have a bunch on hand, you may find yourself using a bunch of cereal bowls.
Once I had all my ingredients out and my instruments laid out, I started on the various stages. It's all separate but since it's dry, it is fast to come together. First you toss the cinnamon inner filling together in its own bowl, then the crumb topping, then the cake dry portion. Then in a separate bowl, whisk up the coffee, sour cream, and vanilla for the cake wet portion. Pretty simple.
Keep those all to the side for now. You'll want the cake ingredients available so don't hide it from yourself. Now your mixer comes to play. Cream your butter and sugar, then add your eggs in one at a time. After it's creamed nicely, you slowly mix in your dry and wet cake mixtures, a portion at a time. Once it's all fully incorporated and you don't see any flour anymore, you can pour half your cake batter into a well-buttered 9x13 pan. Put your dry filling in, covering the entire area, then pour in the other half of your cake batter. Top it with the crumb topping so it looks like this:
Now you bake this at 350F for 40-45 minutes, but I ended up baking for 51 minutes. It didn't seem to dry it out, thankfully, but that's how long it took for a toothpick to come out clean. Unfortunately my batter pouring was off, so the layers are not equal or terribly even. Even though it didn't look great, it tastes great. Not dry, which was a concern with that longer bake time, crumb topping and filling was tasty.
I started mixing ingredients right at 9am and had it in the oven at 9:40, with a few stops for me to feed the dog, re-read instructions, so this feels doable in 30-35 minutes. With the bake time and cool down time, 2 hours is a minimum commitment for this recipe.
Cleanup only took 5 minutes because, despite having used so many bowls and measuring utensils, most of it was dry ingredients that rinsed out quickly.
I will definitely make this again, but maybe not until we're allowed to have gatherings again. I have way too much coffee cake now.
