Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake!

This week, I wanted to switch it up a bit and seeing as blueberries were on special, I went ahead and bought some.  I adore coffee cakes and I’ve had my eye on this recipe to make a Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake for a while.

Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake

 

Like most of my recipes, I found this from Looneyspoons Collection.  Don’t worry, I will be doing something else from other books.  Its just this one has super high success rates (even when I replace and modify).  This one is called A Bundt in the Oven.

Here is the recipe:

Makes 16 servings

Ingredients:

Streusel Topping:

1/4 cup chopped pecans

3 tbsp all purpose flour

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp butter, melted

Cake:

2 cups Bisquick baking mix

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup lemon-flavored yogurt

2 eggs

1/3 cup 1% milk

1/4 cup high quality vegetable oil

2 tsp grated lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups fresh blueberries

Fresh out of the oven!

1) Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray a bundt cake pan with cooking spray and dust lightly with flour.  Set aside.

2) To prepare streusel topping, combine all streusel ingredients in a small bowl and mix well using a fork.  Set aside.

3) Combine baking mix, flour, sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, whisk together yogurt, eggs, milk, oil, lemon zest and vanilla.  Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Batter will be thick.  Gently fold in blueberries.

4) Spoon batter evenly into prepared cake pan.  Sprinkle streusel topping evenly over batter.  Bake for 40-45 minutes.  Cool cake in pan on a wire rack.  Loosen edges using a knife and carefully transfer cake into a serving plate.

Would you like a slice of Blueberry Explosion? 😉

This recipe was relatively straightforward and thats pretty much why I love baking any forms of cakes.  Its just a hassle to pour the batter evenly into the cake pan, but luckily I have a fantastic assistant (my boyfriend) who helps me out.  Lets look at the ingredients that I’ve modified:

– For the topping, I didn’t use pecans but almonds with some bits of hazelnut

– I removed lemon-flavored yogurt and grated lemon zest because the first I can’t eat and the second I ran out

– Replaced 1% milk with unsweetened vanilla almond milk

These little modifications didn’t change much for the recipe, I don’t think.  The coffee cake was very delicious.  It wasn’t too sweet and on top of that, there was a crazy amount of blueberries in comparison to the batter so it kept it very moist and fruity.  Every bite was so addictive.  I ended up cutting another small slice to eat 🙂

If you are into coffee cakes and especially blueberries, you have to give this one a shot. Its light, moist and fruity yumminess! 🙂

Have an awesome Thursday everyone! Keep it up! One more day to go this week then its long weekend (in Canada)!

 

Peanut-BETTER Gingersnaps!

I “heard” from David at Lead.Learn.Live that it was National Cookie Day yesterday.  I’m not really sure if “national” includes Canada but that doesn’t matter.  In celebration for that, I’m giving you the cookies that I made last weekend.  Plus, gingerbread cookies are my  iconic treat for Christmas but last year I learned that Gingersnaps are amazing as well.

This year, I took it in my own hands to make these beautiful cookies called Peanut-BETTER Gingersnaps from Looneyspoons Collections.

 

Don’t they look awesome?

Ingredients:

Makes 20 cookies (supposedly)

 

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon, divided

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp each salt and ground allspice

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1/3 cup light peanut butter

3 tbsp butter, at room temperature

1 egg

2 tbsp molasses

1 tsp vanilla

 

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven at 350F.  Spray a large cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together both flours, baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, ginger, salt and allspice.  Set aside.  Combine granulated sugar, and remaining 1 tsp cinnamon in a small bowl.  Set aside.

3. In another medium bowl, beat together brown sugar, peanut butter and butter on medium speed of electric mixer for about 1 minute.  Add egg, molasses, and vanilla.  Beat again until smooth

4. Using a wooden spoon, stir flour mixture into peanut butter mixture.  You will be making a stiff dough.  Using your hands, shape dough into 1.5 inch balls.  Roll balls in reserved cinnamon-sugar mixture.  Place cookie sheet at 2 inches apart (they spread a lot while baking).  Flatten cookies slightly using a fork.

5. Bake cookies for 7 minutes.  Remove cookies from oven and cool on pan for 1 minute, then transfer from pan to wire rack to cool completely.

 

This one didn’t take a lot of modifications.  I own a lot more assorted ingredients than I used to 6 months ago.  The only ingredient I needed to replace was allspice.  I used nutmeg instead.  Another thing was, “a stiff dough” didn’t really happen for me, but it still worked.  I did end up with bigger cookies so I separated it too big so it yielded less than 20 cookies but rather about 15 or so.

Peanut-BETTER is definitely right.  I usually am not a big fan of peanut butter but man, this one was a perfect mix.  The absolute perfect one and I think its because of the peanut butter.  I used the healthy type which is not even light, its just purely with peanuts and not other additives or preservatives.  The taste was less sweet and it brought out the gingery taste.  The texture was amazing.  I have to say that this ranks as one of my MOST favorite cookies that I’ve done so far.  And I don’t think I’m the only one as I gave some of these to my boyfriend’s parents and apparently, it vanished the next day.

A pure hit and very delicious and also very quick to make.  So quick that you have to be careful of it when its in the oven and you run off to do something else, my suggestion: Don’t do it..just sit next to the oven for a little bit and it’ll be ready for you to take out before you know it!

Have fun! Tell me if you liked it if you do try this out!

Why type of desserts or cookies do you like to eat during Christmas? More minty? More chocolate? Shortbread?