Saturday, February 14, 2009

New York-Style Crumb Cake or Cakelets

New York- Style Crumb Cake
Adapted from “The Foster’s Market Cookbook”


This is rich, and delicious with a cup of coffee or tea. At Foster’s Market it is baked in large jelly-roll pans, then cut into squares to serve.

This recipe makes a large Crumb Cake; for the mini-cakes I cut the recipe in half, and it made nearly two NorPro mini-cheesecake pans (the straight-sided ones with removable bottoms). Fill each well just 1/3 to ½ full; this cake is intended to have plenty of crumb topping in ratio to the amount of cake.

This time I added a few fresh blueberries to half of the cakelet batter before adding the crumble topping.

Make the topping first.

Topping:
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, melted

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and blend well. Stir in the melted butter until all the dry ingredients are moistened. Set aside.

Cake:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 ¼ cup milk
¼ cup canola or safflower oil
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar to garnish, optional

Preheat oven to 325-degrees (F)

Grease and lightly flour a 12 by 17 by 1-inch jelly roll pan.

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

Combine eggs, milk, oil and vanilla in a separate large bowl and whisk until well blended.

Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture just until the dry ingredients are moist. Do not overmix.

Spread the cake batter evenly in the bottom of the jelly roll pan. Set aside. (Don’t worry if the batter barely covers the bottom of the pan, it is intended to be sparse.)

Sprinkle ALL of the crumb topping evenly over the batter and press-in lightly.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes until cake rises and topping bakes into the batter.

Remove from oven and cool slightly in the pan. You may trim edges if you like, then cut into 2 ½ by 3- inch pieces.

Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and serve warm.