This Cinnamon Coffee Cake recipe is moist, buttery, and full of cinnamon flavor. It’s perfect as an afternoon snack, a breakfast pastry or an after dinner dessert!
A homemade cinnamon coffee cake recipe doesn’t get much better than this Cinnamon Coffee Cake with Streusel Crumb Topping!
While I am generally happy to share every recipe that I post, there are some that I am REALLY excited to share- and this is one of them. I’m not a huge breakfast eater, but one thing that I can never resist is coffee cake. Take a look at Coffee Works website where you can learn more ideas of how to enjoy even more your daily coffee.
This is also why I rarely ever buy or make it- I can’t stay out of it.
I love the general idea behind a coffee cake recipe. Someone clearly really wanted to eat some sort of spice or fruit laden cake at 7 AM, but could still hear their mother’s voice wheedling at them, “You don’t eat cake for breakfast!”
“Hush Mom, this is COFFEE cake. Its totally different. You eat it in the morning with coffee! It’s breakfast! Its practically health food.”
I’m not going to sit here and lie to anyone and tell you that this moist coffee cake is health food. It is most definitely not. I WILL tell you that this is the best cinnamon coffee cake and came out exactly the way that I had hoped. It has a light, buttery crumb, but yet is still somehow just a little dense.
There is a ribbon of cinnamon filling through the middle and it is piled with a cinnamon streusel on top. It DOES go perfectly with coffee… and ice cream too. Don’t worry- I won’t tell Mom.
What is Coffee Cake, exactly?
Coffee cake is a butter-based cake that, contrary to what the name implies, does NOT contain coffee. Its somewhere between a regular cake and a pound cake in terms of weight and texture. It’s not supposed to be over-the-top sweet, and is meant to be paired with a cup of coffee- hence the name!
What you’ll need for this breakfast coffee cake recipe:
- Hand mixer – Having a hand mixer really comes in handy for making your recipes. Be sure to grab this [easyazon_link identifier=”B001CH0ZLE” locale=”US” tag=”gogogogo03-20″]Hand Mixer[/easyazon_link] to get your recipes made right!
- Mixing bowl – These bowls are perfect for mixing up any recipe and even come in three different sizes. Get your [easyazon_link identifier=”B00LGLHUA0″ locale=”US” tag=”gogogogo03-20″]3-Piece Glass Mixing Bowl Set[/easyazon_link] here.
- Food processor – I recommend using a food processor to make your toppings required in this recipe. This [easyazon_link identifier=”B00755KNCS” locale=”US” tag=”gogogogo03-20″]Food Processor[/easyazon_link] should do the trick and even has dishwasher safe parts!
- Baking pan – This [easyazon_link identifier=”B001PKUXN8″ locale=”US” tag=”gogogogo03-20″]9 by 9 Inch Covered Pan[/easyazon_link] is great for any kind of baking. You’ll get some great use out of it!
If you Like This homemade Cinnamon Coffee Cake recipe, you’ll also like easy dessert recipes:
NOTE: after multiple readers telling me that they find the topping to be too heavy on the flour, I am amending the topping to reduce the flour by 1/4 cup and increasing the butter by one tablespoon.
Update (5/6/2016): Alright. As I keep getting comments that say that the batter is too thick and the cake is too dry and the topping has too much flour and its too sweet (and yet simultaneously not sweet enough!), I decided to remake this and test the recipe for the third time. It came out just like it did the first and second times I made it.
This recipe is based off my Blueberry Buckle with Streusel Topping, which is always a major success and I have never faced any complaints. The only thing that I changed was using softened butter in the topping, rather than cold butter, which I have now amended in the recipe ingredients. I’m sitting here and eating a piece of it and wondering why anyone would want this either more or less sweet.
I don’t think its dry in any way- in fact the cake is quite moist. Its a butter based cake batter, so its not going to be runny like a boxed cake mix would be. As I state in the instructions, using an offset spatula makes spreading the batter over the filling much easier. I also took pictures at each step, so you can see what everything should look like along the way. These are below the instructions.
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Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 stick butter softened
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 3/4 cup milk
Filling
- 3 tablespoons butter softened
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
Topping
- 5 tablespoon butter softened
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar, scraping down the sides occasionally. Add the vanilla and egg, mix in.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add one half of it to the mixer, and when mostly combined, add the milk. Once the milk is mostly incorporated, add the rest of the flour.
- To make filling: in a small bowl, pinch together the softened butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon until soft crumbs form.
- To make topping: add the butter, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon to a food processor and pulse until coarse crumbs form (You can cut in with forks or a pastry cutter, but I am not patient enough for that!).
- Grease a 9x9 baking pan. Pour in ½ of cake batter, and spread to all four corners. Sprinkle the filling over top, then pour in remaining cake batter, and spread carefully across the top, disturbing the filling layer as little as possible (an offset spatula works well for this).
- Sprinkle the topping over the top and press lightly so it adheres.
- Bake in preheated oven for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool to warm on wire rack before serving.
Notes
tim says
Well I found temp after opening the ENTIRE recipe. We are looking forward to a treat.
Question though…was the batter supposed to flow? It was kind of like working with pizza dough.
Judy says
I made this and was certain is was an epic fail. The dough was difficult to work with and the off-set spatula did not help. To my surprise, the finished product turned out quite well. The cake is moist and not too sweet. I will probably tweek the topping to meet our taste. The recipe is a keeper. Thank you!
Manders says
I loved this recipe! It came perfect I wish I could attach a picture of it! The cake was moist and the topping was nice and crumbly just the way a coffee cake should be! Thank you sooooooooooooooo much for sharing this is definitely a keeper!
Manders says
I love this recipe! It came out amazing I wish I could attach my picture! It has a great rise, the cake is flavorful and most and the top is cinnamony (my own word heheheh) and crumbly like a true coffee cake should be. Thank you for sharing such a great recipe it is definitely keeper!
Shannon says
just wanna let you know this was ah-maz-ing!!!!! <3 <3
We added drizzle of maple syrup to our pieces and SO SO SO GOOOOODDD!!!
thank you girl, you rock!
Mary says
I made this yesterday even after reading all of the comments. I can see why people think the cake isn’t sweet enough because the sweetness is quite subtle. I used only 1/2 cup of flour in the topping because of what other people said. The topping and the filling turned out very yummy and cinnamony. The cake batter was pretty hard to work with like another commenter said, it almost resembled pizza dough, but it turned out looking great anyways, although it was a bit on the dry side, especially around the outside edges. Would I make this recipe again? Probably not.
Laura says
My husband and I really enjoyed this recipe.
Thanks for sharing.
Jason Burnett says
I just took mine out of the oven and wanted to say thank you. It’s moist and delicious. I used parchment paper instead of greasing the pan and I added an extra tablespoon on Butter to both the toppings. My brown sugar wasn’t packing down very well, so the crumble part didn’t have the perfect consistency (my issue, not the recipe). I did taste a little flour in the topping, but it wasn’t a problem.
I wanted to mention that I have seen similar problems with recipes coming out differently on gas vs electric ovens. I have an electric convection oven and it was perfect at exactly 45 minutes. Thanks again for the recipe and don’t let people’s comments change a thing–you are gracious for trying to be accommodating, but a hater’s gonna hate, so ignore them.
J.J. says
Trader Joe had a real good coffee cake mix, currently discontined, which is why I’m looking at this one, on-line. Trader Joe’s dough, also, comes out real thick, almost like dumplings, and it’s hard to work with, to get a nice, clean, middle layer, to get the whole mess to level out nicely, and it just looks like a mess when you throw it in the oven.
Point is, that DOESN’T MATTER!
Everything levels out while baking, and you end up with a wonderful, irregular “mess” of clumps and lumps and chunks, all of which cut very neatly into pieces and taste awesome. You don’t WANT uniformly stratified layers that look like something that a computer engineer designed.
Abby says
Hi!
I stumbled upon your website searching for a coffee cake recipe to make for Easter Brunch. I made this recipe exactly as it’s written (I just had to bake it a tad longer but that could be due to my oven, altitude, etc), and it turned out perfect! The cake was a great texture and the filling/topping was the perfect amount of sweetness and cinnamon flavor. Thanks for a great recipe! I’m excited to try more from your website!
Abby
Abby says
Hi!
I stumbled upon your website searching for a coffee cake recipe to make for Easter Brunch. I made this recipe exactly as it’s written (I just had to bake it a tad longer but that could be due to my oven, altitude, etc), and it turned out perfect! The cake was a great texture (dense but still moist) and the filling/topping was the perfect amount of sweetness and cinnamon flavor. Thanks for a great recipe! I’m excited to try more from your website!
Abby says
Hi!
I stumbled upon your website while searching for a coffee cake recipe to make for Easter brunch. I made this recipe exactly as it was written (I did have to bake it for a bit longer than the recipe stated but that could have been my oven, altitude, etc.) and it turned out perfect! The cake was dense and moist and both the filling and topping had the perfect amount of sweetness and cinnamon flavor. Thank you for the great recipe! I look forward to trying more from your blog!
Ces says
This is soo really good! I don’t have any problem with
this recipe. I did 1/3 cup white sugar coz i ran out and i decided when i added 1/3 cup of coconut sugar for batter cake!
Michelle says
Love this receipt as is. I make it all the time and get requests to bring everywhere I go. Thanks for a great recipe.
Jill says
Sounds like the people with the negative comments have never had coffee cake. This recipe is perfect! Just the right consistency and sweetness. You were right the first time about using cold butter for the topping. It crumbles better that way. Thank you for the recipe!
Laura says
Hey! First timer to your site and made this coffee cake today. It’s AMAZING! Not sure why people were having issues? I didn’t sub or swap anything; followed the recipe to a T, and it came out perfectly! Cake is super moist and crumble top has a slight crunch. And the sweetness is spot on. If it were any sweeter I don’t think I’d be able to eat it! haha. 🙂 I will say that I took it out right at 45 minutes. Perfection.
Meghan says
Am I the only one having trouble finding the recipe on this page..? All I see are pictures and a video. Any help would be appreciated…
Jacqueline says
There’s a glitch at the moment, I’m working on it!
Jacqueline says
Should be fixed!! Thanks for your patience 🙂
Erica says
Could this be doubled in a 9×13 pan?
Jacqueline says
Probably could 1.5x the recipe. If you double, it will be very thick, which is ok, just watch your baking time, and you might want to cover it with foil if it gets too brown.
Stephanie Mordetzky says
Just made this and it was delicious. Followed the directions exactly. It didn’t seem too buttery and the topping didn’t seem like it had too much flour, like some comments suggest. Tastes like a classic coffee cake. My family loved it.
Makayla says
Recommend using more milk. Mine was super sticky so I added a bit more milk and it’s better. 🙂