hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with apple crumble coffee cake
the hats right finally after all these years i've come up with a delicious
solution for people that can't decide whether to make an apple crumble or a
coffee cake and not only does this feature the best things about both of
those recipes but i think all you fans a Dutch apple pie are gonna love this as
well so with that let's go ahead and get started by quickly mixing up our dry
ingredients which will include some all-purpose flour some salt some baking
powder and some baking soda and then once we have all that in there we'll
take a whisk and mix this for about half a minute at which point the first of our
three very simple components is done and we will set that aside and move on to
component number two which is our crumble topping / filling and that's
going to include a whole bunch of chopped walnuts that I lightly toasted
in a dry pan first and then to that we will add some brown sugar and I'm using
light brown but dark brown will work as well and then we'll also do some white
sugar as well as a nice big pinch of salt and of course because this is a
bacon that features walnuts and apples it's pretty much a requirement that we
have to add a spoon of cinnamon and then last but not least we will add some
melted butter and then we'll take a spoon and give this a mix until it is
very very well combined and by that I mean every single piece of nuts and
grain of sugar is coated with that butter so keep mixing until that happens
and when it does it should look a little something like this and that's it our
second component is done and we can set that aside and move on to our wet
ingredients which is going to start with us creaming some sugar into some room
temperature butter and finally for once I remember to take my butter out ahead
of time which I normally always forget to do and then it's too hard in this
step takes forever but this time it was actually relatively soft the only
problem was I picked a spatula that was a little too flexible so it still ended
up being kind of challenging to do but anyway one of these days everything's
going to come together and I'm gonna enjoy some butter and sugar creamy
nirvana but anyway if you stay at it and keep smooshing in smearin it will
eventually all creamed together and become nice and soft and relatively
smooth like this and once it does we're gonna switch to a
whisk and we're gonna whip in two eggs but we're gonna do so one at a time and
that's because this mixture is mostly fat and an egg is mostly water and as
you may have heard they do not like to mix but if we do them one at a time and
we wait for their first one to get mixed in very well before adding the second
they will partially emulsify as opposed to completely separating which is
probably what will happen if you add both at once and by the way at any point
while you're doing this if it does look like it is separating don't worry just
keep whisking and eventually will smooth out insure this step is easier if you
use an electric mixer but I don't okay by doing this by hand I'm gonna burn off
exactly the same amount of calories as one portion of this coffee cake all
right give or take about 400 calories and besides this only takes a couple
minutes but suit yourself I mean you guys are after all the Snake Plissken of
your coffee cake mix ins but the whisk works just fine for me and then what
we'll do once both eggs are incorporated is go ahead and add some vanilla and
please use the real stuff all right real people don't use fake vanilla and then
we'll also at this point add one cup of plain yogurt and then we'll combine all
this with a whisk and by the way I used a relatively runny but beautifully tangy
sheep's milk yogurt but a regular plain Greek yogurt will work as would some
sour cream and then what we'll do once that's been mixed in is go ahead and
dump in our dry ingredients which we will stir in very carefully with our
whisk and please start slowly otherwise all that flour is gonna fly out and then
what we'll do once almost but not quite all that flours mixed in is switch to a
spatula to finish this off being careful not to over mix this okay we're just
gonna need to give this a few folds and it's totally fine if there's a little
bit of flour here and there because we still have to add our apples diced
apples to be specific and how I like to do those is by first removing the core
with four cuts okay one like this and then we'll set it down on its flat side
and then three more slices right next to the core like this which you can then
nibble on along with any random Apple shards
and then what we'll do is take these four pieces and go ahead and slice them
across like this and to whatever thickness we eventually want our cubes
to be which for me is going to be somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch
and yes feel free to eat any of the end pieces and then the finishes will go
ahead and stack up a few slices and then we'll make one cut down the center
before turning them and slicing across to create some relatively consistently
sized cubes and yes of course you can peel these but that's a total waste of
time okay as you'll see those skins completely disappear in the final
product so I went ahead and dice two Honeycrisp apples as shown and we will
add those to our batter which we will then finish off by carefully folding
these in oh and the reason we're doing such a small dice is because we want
these to get nice and soft and tender by the time our coffee cake is cooked and
if we cut our apples too big what will happen is our cake will be done and our
two big pieces of Apple will still be firm which will be sad and texturally
inappropriate so take your time and make them small and that's it once our batter
set we'll go ahead and transfer exactly half into a generously butter baking
dish and I said exactly but just diet I don't want you measuring and then once
we've transferred in half and spread it out as evenly as we can we'll go ahead
and top that with exactly half of our crumble mixture and again just going by
eye and of course we will do our best to distribute that as evenly as we can and
then once that's been accomplished we will go ahead and spread over the rest
of our batter and to make that a little easier since we're gonna be doing it
over that crumble mixture I like to spoon over dollops like this first
before we try to spread it okay that's going to sort of give us a head start
and we should be able to spread it out a little easier without worrying that
we're mixing in and messing up that center layer of crumble and then you've
probably already figured out the next step which of course is topping this
with the rest of our crumble getting it as even as humanly possible and once
that's been applied for one final step we'll give all that a little gentle
pressing down with the spoon to sort of ever so lightly press it into the batter
and that's it our apple crumble coffee cake is now ready to transfer into the
center of a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes or so or until it looks like
this and to make sure this is baked enough we can test it by sticking a
toothpick or wooden skewer into the center and if that comes out clean it's
done and if it comes out with wet undercooked batter on and put it back in
but this one was perfect which means all we have to do is let
this cool all the way down to room temp before we slice in and serve it up and
as far as the servings go I think this would make 8 dessert sized portions or
six if you're doing them as an entree and for a first slice that actually came
out pretty well all I needed was a little bit of relatively minor crumb
tuck in and then I went ahead and took a few pictures before I tucked in
and yes that coffee cup was just a problem ok this was shot at like 5:00
p.m. which is way too late for me to have coffee okay you have to be a lot
older to drink coffee at 5:00 p.m. but anyway that my friends was just a
magnificent bite a coffee cake the taste the texture and the appearance was just
perfect in every way oh and can you see any skins no neither can i nor can you
feel them so do not waste your time peeling those apples not to mention
we've increased the grams of fiber per serving so now besides tasting amazing
this is probably good for you and right here you can get a great look at my
patented layer of crumble in the center coffee cake technique and I said
patented technically is patent-pending but anyway the point is that really is a
secret to what makes this coffee cake so great ok it's almost like we're baking a
coffee cake on top of a coffee cake and while these things are also great
playing without any fruit when you combine those beautifully sweet apples
with that subtle tankiness from the yogurt you really do end up with
something very special which is exactly why this would be such a huge hit here
next fancy special occasion brunch like Mother's Day or totally casual no
occasion brunch but no matter when or why you serve this I really do hope you
give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient
amounts a principle written recipe and much more info as usual and is all
enjoy
you