Bon Appetit's New York-Style Crumb Cake

I have a habit of ripping recipes out of my cooking magazines and saving them in binders. Right now I have three binders filled with these recipes-many I have made, many others that I still have yet to attempt. One of the ones I'd been wanting to try was the New York-Style Crumb Cake recipe from the April 2010 edition of Bon Appetit*. I love anything with a streusel topping and was curious as to how this would taste since one of the main ingredients in the cake is sour cream.

Baking first thing in the morning is probably best done after I've had my coffee. I started baking as soon as I woke up so we could have the cake for breakfast, but in my groggy state I failed to pay close attention to the directions. Halfway through I realized my error and had to start over. Oops.

After making a complete mess of my kitchen the finished product was delicious. I had been worried that the cake would be dry since the only ingredient that came close to a liquid was the sour cream, but the cake came out moist and light. My cake was definitely not as pretty as the picture in Bon Appetit so I will have to work on my presentation next time. :)

A couple of tips:

1) This recipe uses 3.5 sticks of butter. Since I'm not Paula Deen (a.k.a. The crazy Southern chef on the Food Network that will put butter on just about anything), I decided to use margarine for half of the amount in an attempt to make this slightly "healthier".

2) The recipe warns that the topping will be thick once sprinkled on. I thought I had been pretty liberal with my sprinkling (see below), but once the cake started baking and rising the streusel did not evenly coat the entire cake. I had left out about 3/4 cup of the topping so would recommend sprinkling all of it on the cake the next time around.

Pre-baking



Finished product




3) The cake should be baked for 70-75 minutes-at 60 minutes it was slightly under done.

Overall, a successful recipe. I saw Duane run by the bedroom in the afternoon with more cake, so I'm guessing he is happy with the results. Next project- pork posole.

*You can find the complete recipe on www.epicurious.com
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/New-York-Style-Crumb-Cake-358217