Traditional Coffee Cake

Why This Traditional Coffee Cake Works

During mixing, the butter and sugar trap a lot of tiny air pockets as they get beaten together. Those little air pockets stay inside the batter when the eggs, flour, and baking powder go in, so the cake rises up light instead of baking into a dense brick. As the batter warms in the oven, the baking powder starts to puff everything up even more, and the eggs and flour set so the cake holds its shape.

Sour cream and milk keep the batter loose and moist. As it bakes, the flour soaks up the liquid slowly, so the cake stays soft in the middle instead of drying out. The fat from the butter and sour cream coats the flour, which keeps the crumb tender instead of tough.

Inside the pan, the brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts sink slightly into the batter as it rises around them. By the time it finishes, the topping has melted a bit, the sugar has formed a thin, crunchy layer, and the walnuts have toasted, so every slice has a soft, moist cake with a crisp, sweet swirl.

Mistakes To Avoid

Overbaking the cake easily turns the crumb dry and crumbly. Once it goes past done, the edges harden, the top can get tough, and the inside loses that soft, moist texture that makes coffee cake pleasant to eat.

Adding all the flour at once instead of alternating with the sour cream and milk often creates a thick, stiff batter. In that case, the cake tends to bake up dense with a tight, heavy crumb instead of rising into a light, tender slice.

Using cold butter instead of softened butter keeps the sugar from creaming properly. The mixture stays grainy and heavy, so the cake does not trap much air and comes out flatter and more compact.

Spreading the batter too roughly over the first layer of topping can drag the cinnamon-sugar-walnut mix into the batter. This smears the layers together, so instead of a clear ribbon of topping in the middle, the cake bakes up with uneven pockets and a less defined swirl.