Almond Coffee Crumble Cake

And that’s what it is! I thought it a nice surprise that there is actual some coffee in here besides the name. I never got the semantics on what is a coffee cake. What is it and what makes a coffee cake a coffee cake? Someone enlighten me?

Coffee cakes are not known in Holland as such, not by that name anyway. I guess it’s because we Dutch drink coffee all day long and don’t care what we have with it as long as it’s good? Be it the one cookie? I really liked this one, in the book I picked up on sale for €9,95 (!) it looked like a nice, homey cake. Something you can present on a regular let’s say Wednesday morning without making your guest(s) feeling intimidated.

Recipe:

Oven: 150C/300F convection oven
Spring form: 20/22 cm, buttered and lined

170 gr soft butter
170 gr sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp almond extract
(I added some rum as well)
100 gr ground almonds
4 tbs cold espresso (I dissolved espresso powder in 4 tbs hot water and let it cool)
100 gr self raising flour}
1/2 tsp baking powder } sift together

Crumble:

60 gr flour
40 gr light brown sugar
40 gr cold butter, cubed

Optional: almond slivers to go on top of the crumble layer

Make the crumble: Mix flour and sugar in a bowl and rub the cold butter in until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Make the cake batter: Mix butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs by pouring in a little at a time, mixing each time until fully incorporated. Add almond extract.
Switch to a spatula and get folding: first the ground almonds and then half of the espresso. Fold in the sifted flour/baking powder and add the remainder of the espresso.

Spoon the batter in the prepared form, make it nice and even using your spatula. The crumble layer goes on top.
Bake for 50-60 minutes until golden or a cake tester comes out clean. Let cool in the form for about 10-15 minutes and unmold. Will keep for a couple of days covered in a cool spot in your kitchen. Notes:

- Lovely one to make, I had all the ingredients on hand, nothing fancy, not too much sugar/eggs/butter. That’s what attracted me in the recipe.
- Adding the almonds and espresso made the batter look curdled but that came out all right after the mix in of the flour.
- At that point the batter smelled and looked like it would bake into a hazelnut meringue like these. Not that I would have mind hehe.
- Baked up nice and not as golden as I thought in 55 minutes in my convection oven
- I used a bigger springform 24 cm because I had a little regular cake batter left over and used that on the bottom of this cake so that took care of the larger form.
- I’m thinking this batter would bake up real great in muffins as well….

Disclaimer: I haven’t got a clue how it tasted because this one was given away to a friend of ours that took time to design our garden. I heard it was really really nice… Guess I have to bake this again soon!