Brown Sugar Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Watch my best cinnamon coffee cake recipe web story here.

I made this over the weekend and it was such a delicious and moist cake. And OMG that crumble topping! Soooooo goooood!!!

Reader Laura

Who Doesn’t Love a Sour Cream Coffee Cake?

Do you guys remember that coffee cake that your mom used to make for you for breakfast or for lunch box snacks?

The one that was tender and wonderful and had little pockets of cinnamon-y brown sugar dotting the top and buried down inside of it?

This is That Guy.

Tender, buttery, vanilla-scented cake, a ribbon of deeply cinnamon goodness running through the center, and lots and lots of crumbly streusel on top.

Pursuing the Perfect Cinnamon Coffee Cake

My inspiration cake is a cinnamon coffee cake from King Arthur that you can find here.

They call it their favorite, but they have already moved on. So the word favorite is definitely time-limited.

That first round cake was my “control cake.” It was very good, but it wasn’t my favorite.

Here’s what it looked like:

It was moist, but a little bland, to be honest.

When I shared it on Facebook, I asked everyone what they thought, and the consensus was:

• more cinnamon
• More filling
• More topping.

My response?

I can do that for y’all. And for myself, because I felt the same way.

Here’s the cross-section of the guy I finally settled on:

What’s obvious is that there is indeed more filling, more cinnamon, and more topping.

What you can’t tell from the photo is how it tastes.

It’s buttery. It’s tender. It’s vanilla-y. It’s moist. The cinnamon flavor of the ribbon is deepened by a judicious amount of instant coffee. Plus there’s just more of it, which is a bonus.

The crumbs on top are buttery, sweet, crunchy, and full of cinnamon flavor.

Hungry yet? Let’s make one!

Loved this coffee cake! It’s soft, and the topping is absolutely amazing.

Reader (and reviewer) Adriana

Which Pan Size Should I Use?

I tested this cake in 2 sizes:

• 9″ x 13″ rectangle
• 8″ square

The recipe works in either pan.

When deciding, always opt for the pan that you own.

If you own both, here are the considerations:

How tall the cake is.

Do you like a higher cake or one that, when you slice it, is appreciably shorter than it is wide?

Here is what a slice of each cake looks like, side by side:

Filling/topping to cake ratio is also something to consider.

The cake baked in the larger pan will have a bit less filling per square inch, just because there’s a bit less to go around.

The topping will also be a bit thinner.

This is balanced by having a thinner cake, though.

Here’s what the two cakes look like from the top and in cross-section:

How to Make This Cake

Here’s what you’ll need to make the cake. Some ingredients are in more than one component.

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Brown sugar: Used in the “cinnamon ribbon” and the topping. Not only adds deeper flavor than granulated sugar, brown sugar also keeps things softer and moister so the streusel on top goesn’t get too crunchy. If you’d like, you can substitute some granulated sugar for a portion of the brown sugar, or you could even go with all-granulated if you like a crisper streusel and don’t want any molasses flavor
• Salt: Used in all the components to bring out the most flavor and also balance any slight bitterness from the instant coffee
• Cinnamon: The predominant spice in this coffee cake. Warm and aromatic, it pairs really nicely with brown sugar as each ingredient complements the other
• Instant Coffee: Just a little bit added to both the ribbon and the topping. You can’t really taste it, but it does add some depth of flavor. Plus I am in the camp that thinks there should at least be a little coffee in a coffee cake!
• Cake Flour: Used in the cake and in the streusel topping. You can substitute all-purpose flour with no problem here. I like cake flour for its very low protein content and fine texture
• Butter: In the cake and in the streusel topping.
• Sour Cream: In the cake. It’s there for moisture, body, as a vehicle to carry flavor (hello, fat!), and as a tenderizer. The acid in the sour cream helps keep the cake nice and tender. You can substitute buttermilk (I like full-fat), or Greek yogurt. If you use buttermilk, the batter will be a bit thinner than if you use sour cream or yogurt, but nothing bad will happen
• Vanilla: Vanilla shows up in all the components. There are 5 teaspoons of vanilla in total, 3 in the ribbon/streusel and 2 in the cake. Vanilla adds mellow, floral, woody flavor and aroma and works beautifully with cinnamon and butter
• Sugar: I use granulated sugar in the cake to keep the cake a light color for contrast with the ribbon and streusel. You could certainly substitute brown sugar for a portion of the granulated sugar
• Baking Powder: For leavening. Generally speaking, I use 1 teaspoon baking powder per cup of flour. I am using a bit less than that here to keep the cake a bit more compact
• Baking Soda: Balances the acidic sour cream and molasses in the brown sugar so the cake doesn’t bake too quickly.
• Eggs: Add structure, emulsifiers, moisture, protein, and fat. Substitute JUST Eggs, flax egg, aquafaba, or your favorite egg substitute to keep this cake egg-free

Mixing Method

You can make this cake using the creaming method if you’d like. That will work really well.

For the most Tender cake possible, though, use the two-stage method.

Some folks are referring to this method as the “reverse creaming” method, but two-stage and reverse creaming a slightly different from each other.

I’m not going super deep into the differences between the two right now, but I will give a brief overview of the two-stage method:

1. Whisk all dry ingredients together.
2. Add softened butter and mix until you can no longer see the butter and a portion of the liquid and beat for 2 minutes to develop the structure of the cake.
3. Beat in the eggs and the rest of the liquid

For this cake, I modified that method a bit, beating the butter in by itself and then beating in the eggs with a portion of the liquid, following up with the rest of the liquid.

Why it works:

Working the softened butter into all the dry ingredients does a couple of things:

• It coats the flour with fat, limiting gluten formation
• It allows the sugar to start going into solution with the water in the butter. This further limits the water available to activate gluten

Taking the time to beat the eggs in with a portion of the liquid (sour cream, in this case) allows for some gluten development so the cake isn’t so tender that it completely falls apart.

Mixing in the remaining sour cream at the end lightens the batter just a bit. It also adds volume.

Since you’re mixing it in at the very end, it has limited time to activate more gluten.

The end result is a moist and tender cake that also holds together well.

Visual How-To

Here are some photos to show you how to mix up the cinnamon ribbon, turn some of it into streusel, mix the batter, and layer everything together before baking.

Making the Ribbon and Streusel

1. Brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, espresso powder, and vanilla go in the bowl.
2. Mix with a fork until all is evenly moistened and sandy. Set aside four ounces for the ribbon.
3. to the remaining brown sugar mixture, add butter, flour, and a bit more cinnamon
4. Mix with fingertips until crumbly.

Now you have your ribbon and topping. All you need now is to make the cake.

Here’s how:

1. After whisking all the dry ingredients together thoroughly, softened butter gets mixed into the dry mix completely. This limits gluten formation by coating the flour with fat.
2. In go two eggs plus about 1/4 of the sour cream/vanilla (not pictured)
3. Beat the batter for about 90 seconds on medium speed. This helps aerate the batter and develop some structure.
4. Add the last of the sour cream, mixing it in on low speed for a few seconds and then finishing up by hand.

Panning Everything Up

The last step before the cake meets the oven is to layer the ribbon in with the batter and top everything with streusel.

1. Spread about half the batter evenly into your pan.
2. Top as evenly as you can with the cinnamon ribbon.
3. Blob on the rest of the batter evenly.
4. Carefully use an offset spatula to spread the batter to cover. It won’t be perfect. If it is, you get a gols star, because mine was not perfect.

Lastly, pile on the crumbs evenly.

Note this photo is of the square cake. The photos in the collage above are of the 9″ x 13″ cake. The streusel on a 9″ x 13″ will not be as thick as it is on the 8″ square cake.

You can press them down lightly with your hand if you’d like.

I didn’t bother, and they seemed to stick just fine, so it’s your call.

All that’s left now is to bake.

The larger, thinner cake will be ready in roughly 40 minutes while it will take the square cake roughly 45-50 minutes to bake, depending on your oven or whether you used an 8″ square or 9″ square pan.

For your reference, I used an 8″ pan.

Equipment You May Need

You can make this cake with a hand mixer or a stand mixer. It’s easier to use a stand mixer, because it saves your arm from having to manipulate a hand mixer for long periods.

It will take longer to make the batter with a hand mixer, but you can still do it.

Otherwise, bake in an 8″ square pan, a 9″ square pan, or a 9″ x 13″ pan.

And don’t underestimate the power of an offset spatula to make your life easier. I use one to spread the batter and also to loosen the sides of the cake from the pan.

Tips for Success

If your instant coffee has large crystals, put it in a small bowl and crush it to powder with the back of a spoon, making it easier to blend into the swirl and streusel.

When using the reverse creaming method, make sure your butter is very soft. You want it much softer than you’d have it for The Creaming Method but not greasy or melted.

Variations

There are many ways to vary the cake. A few of these variations tinker with the batter itself. Most can be made by altering the ingredients in the swirl and streusel or adding a mix-in to the batter.

Have I tried these ideas yet? No. Will I? Yes. An emphatic yes.

• Streusel That Sinks Into the Cake: The secret to getting those brown sugary “craters” on the top of your coffee cake is this: omit the butter from the streusel and just work in the flour. Increase the butter from 3 to 4 ounces, and melt it. Then drizzle the melted butter evenly over the streusel before baking as directed.
• Super Tender, Super Rich Coffee Cake: Increase the butter from 5 ounces to 2 sticks, or 8 oz, and increase the sugar in the batter from 6 ounces to 9 oz. Everything else remains the same.
• Extreme Ribbon, Extreme Streusel: Double all ribbon/streusel ingredients, holding out 6 oz for the filling and adding butter and flour to the remaining topping mix
• Chocolate Chip: Reduce the cinnamon by half and sub with cocoa powder. That will give you chocolatey ribbon and streusel. Add in finely chopped dark chocolate to the streusel mix and some mini chocolate chips to the batter. I’d consider adding them only to the top “half” of the batter to reduce the risk of them sinking and burning on the bottom of the pan. Or at least use more chocolate chips in the top half than the bottom.
• Chocolate Raspberry: Lose the cinnamon in the ribbon and streusel and replace with cocoa powder. Add some shaved dark chocolate and powdered, freeze-dried raspberries to the mix. If you want, fold chopped fresh raspberries into the batter at the very end of mixing and before panning.
• Orange Cinnamon: Add the zest of 1 large orange to the batter and 1/2 teaspoon orange extract to the ribbon and streusel mix. Or use more zest if you have an extra orange. Some toasted and finely chopped almonds would be really nice here too.
• Butterscotch Pecan: Brown 2 sticks of butter and let cool until soft but not melted anymore. Use 2/3 of that in the cake, substituting dark brown sugar for half the amount of granulated sugar. Use the rest of the browned butter in the streusel mixture. No need to change any other ingredients in the ribbon or streusel, but add finely chopped, toasted pecans to the batter and/or the streusel topping.
• Orange Espresso: This is actually the original variation I posted here eons ago. I’ll show you a picture in a sec. To the batter, add the zest of 1 orange, a couple of drops of orange oil, and 2 teaspoons espresso powder. If all you have is instant coffee with big crystals, crush it to a powder with the back of a spoon so it mixes in evenly. To the ribbon/streusel, add 1 extra teaspoon of espresso powder and the zest of half an orange. Note the batter color will definitely be darker. But it also may be The Best Ever.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. I know you all will have your own ideas, and I hope you feel confident enough to give them a try.

If not, you know where to find me. I’ll help you figure out your perfect coffee cake variation!

Questions

If you have questions about this post or recipe, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can leave a comment on the post and I will get back to you within about 24 hours.

If your question is more urgent, please shoot me an email, and I will respond within 4 hours, unless I’m asleep.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake Q & A

A Note About Measurements

NOTE: Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids.

Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency.

This is the scale I use, love, and recommend. If you’re unsure, please read my post about how to use a food scale.

I hope this cinnamon coffee cake checks all your boxes like it does mine!

Enjoy, and thank you for spending some time with me today.