Raspberry Crumb Coffee Cake

In my veggie box this week, Shawn, my veggie guy, gifted us with LOTS of raspberries, knowing that our youngest has a very soft spot for them.  (He has been known to eat an entire container or more by himself, which, when it comes to snacks for a 12 year old boy, could be A LOT worse,  I know! But, it leaves none for the rest of us…which causes issues, to say the least).  So, I decided today to make something with them before Isaac could eat them all.  Smitten Kitchen had an awesome crumb coffee cake recipe on her site, using rhubarb, but also with the suggestion that other berries would be just as good.  I was convinced!  My recipe differs slightly, as usual, a tweaker I am and always will be! I doubled it, and made some changes with what I had in my kitchen at the time.  It is in the oven as I am typing this, and the smell…is…divine…I made this with the intention of taking it in to work tomorrow, I am having  doubts it will make it that far!

 

Raspberry Crumb Coffee Cake

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.

Fruit:

1 lb raspberries (I used about 3 of the little 6oz clamshell containers)

2tsp lemon zest

6 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp cornstarch

Combine GENTLY so the raspberries hold their shape, set aside.

Crumb topping:

½ cup butter, melted

½ cup olive oil

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

3 cups all purpose flour

Mix together the butter and olive oil in a large bowl.  Add sugars and cinnamon, and stir until combined.  Mix in the flour with a wooden spoon or spatula. It mixes to make a very solid dry-ish dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

Cake:

3 eggs

2/3 cup yogurt (if you use sweetened, you can decrease the sugar to ½ cup if you like) (SK used sour cream, but I didn’t have any)

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt (if your butter is salted, omit this…I was out of unsalted)

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened

Whisk together eggs, yogurt and vanilla, set aside.  In large bowl on stand mixer on low, blend together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt if using.  Add butter and ½ cup of yogurt mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds scrapping down the sides of the bowl. Add ½ of remaining yogurt mixture, and beat for 20 seconds. Add final amount of yogurt mixture, scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula and beat for final 20 seconds. Scoop out about 1 cup batter and set aside.

Spread remaining batter into prepared pan. Carefully Spoon fruit mixture over batter, and then drop the batter that you set aside by tablespoonfuls over top of the fruit. Gently spread the spoonfuls out just a bit.
Using your fingers and a soup spoon, break crumb topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size, and sprinkle to cover the top of the cake/fruit with the crumb chunks. (this makes the crumbs big and chunky, and oh so sneak-ably good!)
Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from the fruit), 55 to 65 minutes.

Cool completely before serving. (If your kitchen smells anything like mine, good luck with this step…)