Did you know it is possible to channel recipes? It’s actually fun. You’ve also got to go into it willing to bomb out. Which is actually a good exercise for you to do. It’s a sort of surrendering.
Anyway, this is what we did today. I call it, or rather they call it: Cowboy Coffee Cake.
Getting set to write out this recipe for the website I still hadn’t come up with a title, until my fingers touched the keys and Cowboy Coffee Cake was written. I proceeded to do what I generally do and that is to argue with the guides. “What do you mean Cowboy Coffee Cake? Nobody mentioned anything about a cowboy to me. There’s lemon in this cake and nuts. Do you think a cowboy would put lemon in a cake?” But, they persisted. I would suppose it was a cowboy who channeled it for me.
2½ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons baking powder
4 TBS butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
Zest from one lemon
Juice of half of that lemon
Topping:
2 TBS butter
2 TBS flour
2 TBS brown sugar
½ cup nuts
Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder. Cut in 4 tablespoons butter. Mix, in a separate bowl, the eggs, milk, ½ cup brown and ½ cup white sugar. Mix the liquid ingredients into the dry. Grate the zest into the batter and add the juice from half the lemon. Mix.
Grease and flour a 9 inch square pan. Spoon in the batter.
For the topping rub together the 2 tablespoons of butter, flour and brown sugar and sprinkle that over the top of the coffee cake. Sprinkle ½ cup of nuts over the top.
When I was making this cake I thought I was done at this point, but one of the guides said to me, “Now for the fun part. Poke your finger into the cake and twirl in a few random places.”
I was nervous about how long to bake it. We set the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit and I let it go 35 minutes total. That was actually too long because the crust on the outside was way too dark. So, the next time I do this I’ll probably let it go for 30 minutes.
As we moved through the recipe I kept asking things like, “Are you sure you don’t want to melt the butter? Cutting it into the flour is like pie dough. Are you sure this is right?” When I’d gotten the liquid ingredients together I was certain they were jerking me around and it was going to be a mess, but I mixed it in anyway. It turned out wonderfully. The crust was a bit brown on the bottom, but the crumb was big and tender and it was delicious with butter on it and even better once it was cooled to have with cream cheese spread on.
I entered the recipe to my Master Cook 9 recipe program and got the nutritional information. Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 364 Calories; 14g Fat (35.4% calories from fat); 7g Protein; 52g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 71mg Cholesterol; 312mg Sodium. Exchanges: 2 Grain(Starch); 1/2 Lean Meat; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 2 1/2 Fat; 1 1/2 Other Carbohydrates.
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