Cinnamon Creme Coffee Cake

Most days I sit and eat the same foods over and over again.  I could cook, but that never seems to happen on a regular basis due to all the usual excuses, you know... "I got lost in the grocery store and couldn't find the spice isle" or "there isn't enough light in my kitchen to read cookbooks"or "standing in my kitchen for longer than an hour makes my leg cramp up... I have a doctor's note okay".  So I find my diet plagued with an endless supply of greek yogurt and tossed salad or when desperate, I shamelessly plow through a pan of rice krispie treats.  Sometimes my pallet is so demanding that I go without food because the art of scrounging for an appetizing bite is just too challenging.

But, once in a while I eat something delicious and food finds the power to simply take me away.  I find myself momentarily day-dreaming of decadent delights in restaurants I have never been to and entrees I have never tried.  

A special loaf of french bread can do this to me... take me places.  The Corner Bakery Cafe, founded in Chicago was originally known for it's fresh bread and espresso.  Is there anything more beautiful than bread?  Today their menu has expanded consisting of even more superb sweets one of which is their  Cinnamon Creme Coffee Cake.  I have a few recipes that I like to make to remind myself that life isn't all burritos, casseroles and chocolate chip cookies.  The Whoopie Pie recipe from the famous Magnolia Bakery is one of them and now I am adding this coffee cake recipe to the list. 

This is actually a copycat recipe posted by igoYOUgo from whence it came I can not say.  But I can tell you that it tastes dangerously similar to the recipe by The Corner Bakery Cafe.  

Best served fresh out of the oven, so delectable, you'll want to skip dinner and just go straight for the dessert.  But when does that ever change? 

Cinnamon Creme Coffee Cake

(altered from igoYOUgo)

Topping and Filling Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar

2/3 cup brown sugar

5 tsp. ground cinnamon 

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

2 2/3 cups flour

2 sticks salted butter, melted

Cake Ingredients:

3 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup butter, room temp, cut into pieces

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1 1/2 cups sugar

5 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. almond extract 

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups sour cream

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º. Grease and flour 10 inch tube pan or bundt pan.

Combine first five topping ingredients in a large bowl, add melted butter and combine with a wooden spoon. You want big chunks of the topping and filling so don’t over mix.

Cake: Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium size bowl, set aside.

In a large bowl cream butter, shortening, and sugar until very light. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix in almond extract and vanilla. Add the dry cake ingredients alternating with the sour cream. The batter will be very thick.

Spoon half of the cake batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle half of the topping mixture over the batter, then the remaining cake batter, then remaining topping. Press the final topping layer into the cake layer very gently, just to make sure it “sticks”.

Bake in the center of the oven for 50 min –  1 hour and 15 minutes. Cake is done when it starts to pull away from the sides and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 30 minutes. Loosen sides of cake with knife and invert onto a wire rack and then invert again on to serving platter. Sprinkle with powder sugar to finish.