Starbucks Old Fashioned Coffee Cake

Starbucks Old Fashioned Coffee Cake ~ Coffee Anyone???

“MOM!!! I just found the best recipe book in the entire world!”

“Well then, I think I want that too! Where do I buy it?”

Turns out it was a Pinterest link to all the Starbucks recipes in electronic book form, so I didn’t have to buy it, but there was no option to print it! I know that sounds odd, but even using the web browser print feature didn’t work properly. So I captured a screenshot of one of the recipes she wanted to make and printed it. I’ve typed it out below so that you can copy and paste it to a word editor if you want to print it, or just print this page from your browser. It’s been on my bucket list to get some kind of widget for print-friendly recipes, but alas I have not gotten around to that research. And by the way, the website where I got this from is not the original author. I tried to get to the original source of it, and ended up on all kinds of pfishy and scary pages so I am leaving the link to it off of here in the interest of security.

Since I am not the baker in the family (as I’ve told you too many times, right?) we followed this recipe exactly. I am pretty sure you can’t fudge on baking ingredients without something in the process failing. OK, maybe adding more nuts or a different type would work, or subbing raisins or something, but the rest of it is in the “no-touchy-changey” zone for me.

I let my daughter make the majority of this, but I did have to supervise and step in periodically. She’s actually coming along quite well with her mixing and measuring techniques. This coffee cake came out just delicious, and having a piece warm out of the oven was divine! It’s not overly sweet, and the house just filled with this lovely aromatic cinnamon and fresh baked bread smell, which lingered for hours and hours afterwards. I am glad we made this. We’ll have a yummy breakfast or afternoon snack for several days now!

Starbucks Old Fashioned Coffee Cake

Starbucks Old Fashioned Coffee Cake
Copied from somewhere on the WWW

For the Struesel:
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

For the Cake:
Butter and flour for pan
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. First, butter and flour the inside of a Bundt pan or 8-inch square pan, or something of that size. We used a Bundt pan, which is the round baking pan thingy with a hole in the middle. In a medium bowl, combine the Struesel ingredients. To make the 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs, all you need to do is take a full sleeve of them and crush them in a baggie with a pestle or your fist. It would have been nice to know that, as we kept crushing them up three at a time and adding them to a measuring cup, and lo and behold! Oh well. Lesson learned. An entire sleeve of graham crackers is exactly one and a half cups. And that cardamom ingredient? I almost fell on the floor with the price. It costs over $48 a pound for it!?!?! Thank goodness for bulk aisle bins. I pretty much got exactly what we needed (actually about 1/4 teaspoon too much) and it cost me 46 cents. It didn’t break my bank for that much. However, if you don’t have a bulk aisle to purchase this from, do NOT buy a spendy container of it in the spice aisle. Just leave it out, OK? Just sayin’…

Moving on, take a much larger bowl, and mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Chop up the softened butter into smaller cubes and add to the bowl with the eggs, vanilla extract, and milk. According to the recipe, you should “beat vigorously until smooth and quite thick,” for about one minute. Well we didn’t use an electric mixer because it didn’t say to do that, so we used a fork and took turns until we deemed it vigorously beaten and quite thick, which took longer than one minute. Maybe three or so. Spread half of the batter in the bottom of your pan, then sprinkle half the Struesel mixture evenly over that. Layer the rest of the batter and Struesel again. Bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool for a minimum of 20 minutes, then remove from pan and serve. Coffee would be an excellent choice with this. My daughter is really trying to turn me into a baker!