Classic Coffee Cake

This is the BEST classic coffee cake with sour cream and extra cinnamon crumb topping. It’s moist, bouncy, and easy to make with an optional, but highly recommended creamy vanilla drizzle.

What makes this classic coffee cake the BEST?

• Extra Cinnamon Crumb Topping. There’s cinnamon crumble running through the center of the cake as well as on top and it’s SO good.
• Texture. The texture of this cake is perfect – moist, bouncy, light, and fluffy all at the same time.
• Easy to make. This recipe comes together in a regular 8 inch square pan in under an hour.

Ingredients

• Butter. I recommend using a high quality salted butter like Kerrygold. You’ll need cold butter for the crumble and room temperature butter for the cake.
• Sour Cream. Grab the full fat sour cream for the best flavor.
• Cinnamon. For that classic coffee cake crumble we all love.
• All Purpose Flour. I have not tested this recipe with anything other than all purpose flour.
• Brown Sugar and Granulated Sugar. Granulated sugar for the cake, light brown sugar for the crumble.

How to Make Classic Coffee Cake

Make the Cinnamon Crumble.

In a medium mixing bowl, add the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Whisk to combine. Cut the cold butter into small cubes, then use a pastry cutter or your fingertips to “cut” the butter into the sugar/flour mixture. You want to keep the butter as cold as possible, and get it to pea-sized crumbles. Once incorporated, pop it into the fridge to keep it cold until you’re ready to use it.

Using very cold butter will help keep the crumble from sinking through the cake as it bakes. The colder the butter is, the better the crumble will maintain its structure as it bakes and give you the defined line of crumble through the middle of the coffee cake.

Make the Cake Batter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line an 8 inch square baking pan with parchment paper. Leave an overhang of parchment so that you can easily lift the cake from the pan for slicing and serving.

In the bowl of your stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar for 5 minutes, until light and crumbly. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and one egg at a time, mixing for 2 minutes after adding each egg to ensure they are fully incorporated and to whip air into the egg whites. This will help make sure the cake rises properly and doesn’t sink in the middle so don’t skimp on the mixing!

Add the sour cream and mix until combined. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined with a few streaks of flour remaining. Do a final mix with a rubber spatula to incorporate the remaining flour and prevent over mixing.

Add half of the cake batter to the prepared pan and use an offset spatula to spread it into an even layer. The batter will be thick, but will seem like a thin layer, that’s ok. Add half of the cinnamon crumb mixture and spread into an even layer using your fingertips.

Spreading the second layer of cake batter will be a little more difficult to do without disrupting the crumble. I like to use a cookie scoop to plop the cake batter all over the top instead of just pouring it all into the middle. It makes it SO much easier to spread. Do that, then add the remaining crumb topping and bake at 350 for 38-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. You want to make sure it’s fully baked through in the center to avoid any collapse. Let cool while you make the vanilla icing.

Make the Vanilla Icing.

In a small bowl, whisk together all of the ingredients. Drizzle over the cooled cake, slice, and serve. I like to cut the cake into either 8 large, or 16 small slices.

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