For a recent office meet and greet with our current set of law student clerks, I decided to make the "Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake" from a digital booklet of recipes by Erin Clarkson of Cloudy Kitchen. I received the booklet as part of my reward for backing a Kickstarter project by Heilala Vanilla to develop a line of flavored extracts. To be honest, I'm a bit at a loss to figure out what to do with the set of flavored extracts I received -- I even have pumpkin spice vanilla! -- so having the recipe booklet as a starting point is quite helpful.
Clarkson describes the cake as "a perfectly dense chocolate chip coffee cake, with a little tang from the yoghurt, topped with an aggressive amount of streusel." Both the cake and the streusel include Heilala cocoa vanilla extract. The recipe is written to be baked in a 9-inch square pan, but I multiplied it by 1.5 and baked it in a 9-inch by 13 inch pan.
To make the streusel, you just stir together turbinado sugar, brown sugar, flour, salt, Heilala cocoa vanilla extract, and melted butter. For the cake, you cream room temperature butter with sugar until light and fluffy; add an egg and cocoa vanilla extract; and alternately add in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) and sour cream (the recipe calls for either sour cream or Greek yogurt). Chopped chocolate is an optional add-in, so I stirred in some Cacao Barry 38% Lactée Supérieure pistoles.
I poured the batter in a my parchment-lined pan and sprinkled on the streusel, which covered the batter completely. I cut the cake after it was completely cooled and even though the layer of streusel was thick and very firm, it stayed intact as I cut through it to get neat slices. The cake was dense with a very tight crumb but soft. Because there was milk chocolate in the cake itself, I wasn't able to discern the difference from using cocoa vanilla extract instead of plain vanilla extract, but this cake was quite tasty, and the buttery streusel was fantastic.
In retrospect, I think that milk chocolate was the wrong choice for this cake. I think it would have been better with dark chocolate, and in any case, I shouldn't have been lazy and used the pistoles (which are larger than regular chocolate chips) whole without chopping them. I think that mini chocolate chips (or smaller chopped chocolate pieces) would yield a more even and pleasing distribution of chocolate. Or you could just leave out the chocolate altogether!
Recipe: "Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake" by Erin Clarkson of Cloudy Kitchen.
Clarkson describes the cake as "a perfectly dense chocolate chip coffee cake, with a little tang from the yoghurt, topped with an aggressive amount of streusel." Both the cake and the streusel include Heilala cocoa vanilla extract. The recipe is written to be baked in a 9-inch square pan, but I multiplied it by 1.5 and baked it in a 9-inch by 13 inch pan.
To make the streusel, you just stir together turbinado sugar, brown sugar, flour, salt, Heilala cocoa vanilla extract, and melted butter. For the cake, you cream room temperature butter with sugar until light and fluffy; add an egg and cocoa vanilla extract; and alternately add in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) and sour cream (the recipe calls for either sour cream or Greek yogurt). Chopped chocolate is an optional add-in, so I stirred in some Cacao Barry 38% Lactée Supérieure pistoles.
In retrospect, I think that milk chocolate was the wrong choice for this cake. I think it would have been better with dark chocolate, and in any case, I shouldn't have been lazy and used the pistoles (which are larger than regular chocolate chips) whole without chopping them. I think that mini chocolate chips (or smaller chopped chocolate pieces) would yield a more even and pleasing distribution of chocolate. Or you could just leave out the chocolate altogether!
Recipe: "Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake" by Erin Clarkson of Cloudy Kitchen.
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