Mother's Day Brunch and the Easiest Coffee Cake Ever

On Mother's Day, my husband, my brother and I all worked together to make a special brunch for my mom. I fried up some delicious peameal bacon, hubby took care of toast duty and assisted with the delicious cheddar & green onion scramble my bro Duck put together.

A lovely little plateful to be sure, but something was definitely missing... something sweet!

Coffee cake ingredients, assemble! I am willing to bet you probably have all of the ingredients for the cake base in your cupboards and fridge right this very moment. Milk, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, an egg and your choice of butter, margarine or shortening. I was feelin' the Becel this particular day.

Like many of my favourite recipes, the directions here are basically measure & mix! Beat vigorously until smooth. Yes, you could use a hand mixer here, but frankly the whisk was closer.

Perhaps my judgement is not at its clearest before I've had breakfast. Oh well.

Next, you want to put together the topping for the cake, it's simply butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and flour. Mix until nice and crumbly. Add nuts or whatever you like at this point. Our secret ingredient?

You'll see in a couple of pictures. Gosh!

Next, grease and flour your baking pan of choice. Usually I would do this cake up in a simple 9" round pan,, but since it was a special day I thought it would be nice to give everyone their own little coffee cake.

These silicone jumbo muffin cups were the easiest thing I've ever greased & floured because they're so flexible and easy to manoeuvre.  The recipe turned out to be just enough to make 5 jumbo muffin-sized coffee cakes.

So, first, put a bit of batter in the bottom of your baking cup, then sprinkle with about a tenth of the topping.

And the 'secret ingredient' is... CHOCOLATE CHIPS! Allez cuisine!

Uh, I mean... a bit of semi-sweet chocolate chips, somewhat unexpected in a cinnamon-brown sugar topping adds a lovely richness to this cake.

Fill with more batter almost to the top, and sprinkle on some more topping.

Pop 'em in the oven at 350 degrees for about 25-27 minutes, and behold:

Oh... Yes, please!

The topping bakes up sweet and crunchy and chocolatey and melty and wonderful. And the inside?

Fluffy, light, buttery (Becel-y in this case, also good!) and streaked with more brown sugar and chocolate. Now THAT'S a brunch worth getting out of bed for.

At 3 PM.

Hey, we're not morning people.

Want to make your own?

Easiest Coffee Cake Ever
Adapted from Betty Crocker

Cake:
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening, butter or your favourite margarine
3/4 cups milk
1 large egg

Topping:
1/3 cup golden brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup chocolate chips (or nuts, or dried fruit, or bits of fresh apple, or whatever!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

For the cake, simply combine all ingredients and beat vigorously by hand for 30 seconds, or use a hand mixer on low, until smooth. Mix topping together separately until crumbly.

Grease and flour pans of choice. For 9" round cake pan, layer batter and topping as desired and bake for 27-30 minutes. For jumbo-muffin size, bake 25-27 minutes, or until golden brown on top. For regular muffin size, 18-21 minutes.

Now that I listed those different variations for the 'secret ingredient' I have all kinds of ideas circulating in my head... When is Father's Day again?

Until next time!