Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake

I love baked goods in the morning. An awesome cup of coffee + coffee cake = a happy Katelyn. Dessert for breakfast? Heck yes. (Don't look at me weird, my friend Sam likes to eat cannolis for breakfast when she visits Italy. I call that smart calorie prioritization.)

This recipe is not healthy, but it's not a complete diet wrecker either. That's because the moisture content comes from applesauce, yogurt, and butter rather than butter, butter, and more butter. There is no sacrifice in taste however. The cake has a great moist crumb and tastes mildly of vanilla and the topping is cinnamon-pecan-brown sugar crumbly awesomeness. It reminds me of the cinnamon swirl coffee cake they serve at Starbucks, but better because this has pecans and doesn't cost $3 a slice. You can go even lower on fat/calories with this recipe by replacing the stick of butter with more applesauce, but the cake will taste pretty apple-y and be drier, without as much of the delicate vanilla flavor. You could also scale back the sugar in the cake significantly if you don't like your dessert-for-breakfast super sweet.

To start this cake, you beat a stick of butter until it's nice and fluffy. Add the applesauce and yogurt. Beat in the sugar and vanilla.
Then you beat in the eggs one at a time. Sift the dry ingredients over the top and gently fold the mixture until it's just combined. You'll have a fairly thick, lumpy batter to spread in a greased 9 by 13 pan. (This would also be really good baked in a bundt pan with the crumble layered in the center, but you'd probably need to adjust the baking time.)

The topping is simply a little butter stirred together with brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped pecans and sprinkled over the top.

 Half an hour or less of baking time and you've got this:

Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake
Yields 16 small servings (3.25" by 2.25" slices)
Cooking Time: 50 min. (20 active)
Adapted from this recipe


For the cake:

2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder

1 stick (4 ounces) butter (room temp. is easier to beat, but not strictly necessary)
1 cup good quality, unsweetened Greek Yogurt or sour cream (I use Fage 0% in all my recipes!)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (often snack sizes come in 1/2 cup portions so you don't have to worry about using up an opened container if you go that route)

1 1/2 cups sugar (or less)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

For the topping:

2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup pecans, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions

1. Grease a 9 by 13 pan and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a flour sifter, stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Beat in the applesauce and yogurt.

4. Beat in the sugar and vanilla. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time.

5. Sift the flour mixture over the wet ingredients and gently fold them together by hand until just combined.

6. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

7. In another bowl stir together the topping ingredients. Sprinkle evenly over the cake.

8. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (Using the convection setting on my toaster oven it takes exactly 25 minutes for me.)

Banana Muffins with Pecan Crumb Topping

Today I made the last banana muffin recipe you will ever need. No really, if I had the metabolism of my marathon runner sister-in-law I would have promptly inhaled every one of these hot out of the oven. My husband would have wandered into the kitchen when the oven dinged to find my face covered in crumbs, a guilty, but blissful look on my face.

I've known for a long time that if I could choose a bizarre superpower it would be the ability to eat anything I want and still be healthy and not get fat. Given this power, I might crush the world's banana market just for this recipe. Have other people around to help you eat these or if you are Kimberly don't. You've been warned.

Banana Muffins with Pecan Crumb Topping
(adapted from MizzNezz's recipe) 
Yields 12 muffins

For the Batter:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ripe medium to large bananas, mashed with fork
1/3 cup butter (a little over 5 tbsp.), melted
1 egg beaten

For the Topping:

1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cold butter
1/4 -1/2 cup chopped pecans (I used 1/4 cup this time, but I could easily see doubling the amount)

1. For the batter, mix all the dry ingredients except the sugars together. In a separate bowl mix the sugars, bananas, melted butter and egg. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.

2. For the topping, mix the sugar, cinnamon, and flour together. Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Add the pecans.

3. Fill 12 well-greased muffin tins with the batter. (Depending on the size of your bananas they'll be 3/4 or more full.) Sprinkle the topping over the top. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes. These are super moist muffins so I would remove them from the tin and cool on a rack so they don't get soggy.

A Few Tips for Newbie Muffin Bakers
(These are things I wish someone had told me before I baked my first batch of muffins way back when.)

1. The secret to a fluffy, tender muffin is to not overdevelop the gluten in the flour. That's why wet and dry ingredients are always kept separate in muffin recipes until the last step. Your goal is to stir as little as possible to combine the wet and dry ingredients. The batter should stay pretty lumpy. Resist the urge to pummel it until smooth.

2. My first couple of attempts at crumb toppings failed miserably. I hacked at the mixture with a fork until I had a buttery paste. Don't do this! You want small balls of butter mixed with the dry ingredients. The easiest way to achieve this is with a pastry blender, a simple 5 dollar tool that will save you a load of work in many baking situations (I use mine for biscuits all the time). If you don't have one handy you can cut the butter into very small pieces and stir it with the dry ingredients.

3. Brown sugar and granulated sugar can be substituted for each other on a 1 to 1 basis, just make sure the brown sugar is tightly packed. Brown sugar also adds moisture and a molasses flavor, which I personally love.