Every once in a while you have a night where you decide to break up a dogfight at a co-workers housewarming party and instead are bitten by their dog. Right? Typical.

You drive yourself home at 1:30 am bleeding, adrenaline messing with your senses. Once home you start examining your arms, legs and abdomen for bites. Then you clean, sanitize, watch the hydrogen peroxide bubbling inside the incisor shaped hole in you arm, bandage and drink a beer.

Hungry yet?

Ever since I made this coffee cake with peaches during the late summer, my roommate has been asking for it. She isn’t one who enjoys much in the way of sweets, but this has a well-spiced crumb topping that makes it something more than just a baked sweet. After a night like the one mentioned, I felt maybe this could help soothe her bruised, swollen, and sore arms.

This is from a Williams-Sonoma recipe. I like how their recipes are all so deliciously simple which means they are great as is, but also work very well with any number of substitutions. The vanilla and almond flavored cake base was made vegan with basic butter and milk substitutions and a very ripe banana instead of egg. Three leftover Granny Smith apples became the chosen fruit, chopped and pressed into the cake. The crumb topping is brown sugar, butter, flour and lots of spices. As for those, they are the result of my mood’s fancy. Generally, a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, or cloves are good.

Just Bitten by a Dog Apple Coffee Cake with Spiced Crumb Topping

adapted from Williams-Sonoma

Crumb Topping:
When making this the first time, I measured the ingredients as specified, but honestly, I thought there was too much topping. The second time I used a little less than:
¾ cup flour
⅓ cup brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Allspice
Cloves
6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

The cake:
1 ½ cups flour
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ or 1 small very ripe, well-smashed banana
4 tablespoons butter, melted
½ cup milk
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 granny smith apples, peeled and sliced or chopped

For cake: In bowl mash banana very well with fork or masher. Mix in vanilla, almond, milk and butter. Add in dry ingredients until just combined.

For topping. Combine all ingredients in bowl. Add in seasoning until it smells just right. Mix until crumb like. Fingers work well for this process.

Grease an approximate 9” round or square dish. Pour in cake batter, smooth until even. Arrange apple slices on top. Sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the top of cake.

Bake at about 350° for about 40 -45 minutes.

Cool and eat for breakfast or dessert. Or as any in between snack.

25 Oct This entry was published on 10/25/2009 at 8:54 pm. It’s filed under Bakery, Breakfast, Desserts, Events, Friends and Family, Living day to day, Living life to the fullest and tagged Apple, Sugar. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.