coffee cake and long weekends.
happy memorial day weekend everyone! i hope all of you are able to do some type of barbecuing/bonfiring/beer-drinking with your family and friends. and i hope you're all making sure to toast the memory of the brave men and women who have fought, even to their last breath, for your freedom to do all those things. it's a sacrifice i can't imagine, and am so thankful to them for!
|||
because the tundra is still warming up (i think it keeps forgetting that it's supposed to be feeling summery already...), we have been keeping a pretty low profile this weekend in terms of the above activities. but the crappy weather hasn't stopped us from keeping very busy around the z household. there was some house hunting on saturday morning (unsuccessful), followed by golf for me with an old roommate and dear friend (she just bought a house, and made me feel tons better about the whole process!).on of the highlights of the weekend was that some of Mister Man's college friends were in town from texas and maryland, and we managed to get a big group of people together for a last-minute saturday night reunion! i love his friends so much, but we don't get to see them very often, so it's such a treat to have them all in one place. i probably owe them big time for making sure he made it out of his college years alive and in one piece...this morning i had a major wedding planning brainstorm with the lovely bride-to-be, ashley, or as i've called her since middle school, bitchface. the invitations are printed and ready to assemble next weekend, the bachelorette party list is made, and the wedding shoes are purchased. all that's left is flowers, shower planning with the mother of the bride, and planning the most kick-ass bachelorette party ever, and the marriage can commence! both of us talk a mean streak, so what would normally be a one hour planning session turned into two and a half, but i wouldn't have it any other way.sometimes after a morning/weekend like this, you have to decompress though, you know? so i decided to go on a baking spree. two loaves of banana bread went into the oven, and i still didn't feel like i was done decompressing. and that meant it was time to keep my promise to sally and test out her coffee cake recipe in comparison to mama hools' recipe. (see, i told you i'd let you know what i thought!)
|||
the main difference between sally's coffee cake and my mom's is that my mom's coffee cake is a very basic recipe made with sour cream, less butter, and no buttermilk. oh, and sally's coffee cake happens to be called "super crumb coffee cake", which basically means that it's half crumble topping, half cake when you take it out of the oven. it's pretty crazy and will put you into a sugar coma.[gallery type="square" link="file" ids="1834,1833"]i'm just going to link you all back to her website for the recipe, because there are some very specific instructions re: the temperature of the egg and the buttermilk and she does a much better job of explaining it than i would. but i will note that when i made the recipe, i used raw cane sugar instead of white sugar, and i used 1 tsp. of vanilla and 1 tsp. of almond extract instead of 2 tsp. of vanilla. other than those two minor changes, i followed the recipe to a tee. and the result was a very sweet, flavorful coffee cake, that was so moist and so decadent, Mister Man and i were in disbelief when we tasted it. i was not expecting this to taste so much like an actual cake. it was definitely more of a dessert than a brunch food!
(please ignore my christmas themed spatula that never got put away...)
[gallery type="square" link="file" ids="1836,1837"]
the verdict between the two is that it's a tie. i honestly cannot decide which recipe i like better. i was so surprised at how different they were, because really, coffee cake is kind of difficult to improve upon, and you think when you've tasted one, you've tasted them all. i will say that my mom's recipe is a lot easier to throw together and get an awesome result (especially if you're like me and never think about things like bringing your egg to room temperature). you will never go wrong with hers. but if you ever needed to impress someone at a breakfast or brunch, say, a boyfriend, a husband, some girlfriends, etc., it would probably be worth the extra time and thought for a "fancy" coffee cake like sally's.
let's be clear though. i will never be shy about how much crumb topping i put on my coffee cake again, no matter what recipe i'm using. that stuff is bangin'.
|||
elsewhere with love: bloglovin’ || facebook || twitter || instagram