Rasberry Cheese Cake Layered Coffee Cake

This is an easy holiday coffee cake. The recipe is wonderful for the many holiday mornings or bake-take to parties coming up. It is easy enough to be whipped up last minute, and fancy enough to be served with mimosas at brunch. Best of all the ingredients are inexpensive and usually in our pantry and fridge.

You know that as-seen-on-TV sandwich machine gadget that would heat up and toast both sides of the bread while making little pocket of melty goodness. When I was little my father used to make us hot sandwich pockets of jam and cream cheese. My sister loves these sandwiches to this day. And happy memories of this are the inspiration for this jam and cream cheese coffee cake. I took my classic sour cream coffee cake and added the always welcome accompaniments of jam and cream cheese. The streusel topping is my unabashed attempt at being luxurious around the holidays.

To make this tri-layer coffee cake:

A couple hours or the night before you make this cake take out the butter, eggs, and cream cheese so they have a chance to come up to room temperature.

When you start getting out the ingredients to make the cake and toppings, preheat your oven to 350 F. Choose what you are going to bake the cake in. I choose a 9-inc spring form pan and layered a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom. You could really use any thing you liked but this is a sticky batter so the more butter and protective layers the better.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt

In your hand-dandy kitchenade mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. This is when I made my toppings. When light and fluffy, add the sourcream, egg, and vanilla. Sift together all the dry ingredients i.e. the cinnamon, flour, baking powder, and salt. (I know it doesn’t make sense but sugar is considered a wet ingredient. It is just one of those things you do because your mother said so. Kind of like how fish is considered not a meat by the Catholic Church. I just don’t get it; it’s an animal, its meat. Maybe that is just me. Ok back to the cake.) Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix for a few minutes. The batter will be very thick but creamy. Spread it in to a spring form pan, which is buttered and has a parchment paper bottom.

Streusel Cover

1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup of sugar bowl sugar
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
½ teaspoon or a good shaving of fresh nutmeg
¼ cup or ½ a stick of cold buttah (it’s like buttah)

Just throw everyone in the food processor and give it a bliz; just a couple of pulses and viola. Set aside until after the cake is ready.

Cream Cheese and Jam Topping

An 8oz package of cream cheese (softened because it was left out over night)
¼ cup sugar bowl sugar
1 large egg
A teaspoon of vanilla
½ cup of any jam (I used raspberry because that is what I had open)

Whip up all of these ingredients in your mixer of by hand. Then just pour over batter.

Bake the tri-layered confection for an hour (60 minutes) in a 350F oven. Let it cook and serve warm. In retrospect, I would have used fresh berries on top and made the streusel a little more crumbly with pecans. But according to my co-workers this is a fantastic coffee cake, so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy baking.