New York-Style Crumb Cake

This recipe comes from Cook's Illustrated. I made only a few adjustments to it. The directions say to be sure to use cake flour, or else it will turn out too dry. It only is enough to make a 9" cake pan, so it was almost completely gone after we ate. (We had "breakfast" for dinner!) It's good enough that I'm tempted to make another one, tomorrow morning!

Printable Recipe

Crumb Topping
8 tbsp butter, melted and still warm
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar (I used light brown sugar)
3/4 tsp cinnamon (I used 1 tsp, but you could even add a little more)
1/8 tsp salt
1  3/4 cups cake flour
I sprinkled on some nutmeg, when I put the crumb topping on the cake batter

Cake
1  1/4 cups cake flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, cut into 6 pieces, softened but still cool - not melted at all
1/3 cup buttermilk or plain low-fat yogurt (I used buttermilk)
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract

For The Topping:
Whisk the butter, sugars, cinnamon and salt together in a medium bowl. Stir in the flour until completely incorporated; set aside to cool to room temperature, 10 - 15 minutes.


For The Cake:
Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line an 8" square pan with foil, allowing extra foil to hang over the edges of the pan. Lightly coat the foil with vegetable oil spray.
(I skipped the foil step, and obviously, I used a round cake pan ... my square pan is in storage. I must say that I did have a little trouble getting the first piece out of the pan, but that could have been because I did not cool it as long as it says to later on in the directions. So you may want to do the step with the foil.)

Whisk the flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until completely combined. With an electric mixer on low speed, add the butter 1 piece at a time, beating until the mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no visible chunks of butter remaining, 1 - 2 minutes. Add the buttermilk, egg, egg yolk and vanilla and beat on medium-high speed until batter is light and fluffy, about 1 minute, scraping sides down as needed.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Break the crumb topping (Which will probably be somewhat hardened at this point, but that is ok) into large pea-sized pieces and spread in an even layer over the batter beginning with the edges and then working toward the center. (There was so much crumb topping, I had to do almost a double layer of it; but that's not a bad thing!) Just be sure not to press the topping down into the batter. I sprinkled the crumb topping with nutmeg.

Bake at 325 degrees until the crumbs are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 35 - 40 minutes. Cool the cake on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes, remove from pan by lifting the foil extensions. Dust with pwd sugar just before serving.