Strawberries make me restless.
It’s a fact. Yes, a strange fact, but no less true.
See, in my part of the world, strawberries come along every year right around May. This is around the time when I’ve loooooong ago let slide any New Year’s resolutions I might have made for myself, when it’s possible that I’ve slacked a bit on my workout routine, and the goal of reading a chapter of a book a night before I fall asleep has somehow transferred into watching an old episode of House every night before I pass out.
Don’t even get me started on the mania that I try to pass off as my closet. It’s not pretty.
So…. strawberries come along at a time of year when I’ve cemented in some slightly lazy and ooooooh so comfortable habits for myself.
I don’t know how or why this works, but strawberries inspire me to shake my world up a bit, maybe introduce something new, maybe hop on one leg every morning just for the hell of it…. whatever. This is the time of year when I change things up a bit.
This year, strawberries have inspired me to do two things: learn Italian and combine fresh strawberries with one of my favorite cakes of all time…. streusel topped coffee cake.
Let’s do this.
Now seems like a good time to admit that you could put streusel topping on just about anything and I’d devour it with few regrets. Please don’t let that take away from how crazy awesome this strawberry coffee cake is. Moist sour cream coffee cake is mixed with cooked down fresh strawberries and topped with streusel topping. It’s both lovely ad humble, and just the perfect little cake to sit with in front of my computer as I work my way through Italian flash cards.
Strawberry Coffee Cake
inspired by Panache at Rose Hill
1 heaping cup sliced strawberries
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons water
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 ounces sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a few drops of almond extract (optional)
Topping:
3 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3 1/2 tablespoons sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
To make the topping:
Combine all the topping ingredients in a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until crumbly. Set aside.
To make the strawberry mixture:
Combine strawberries, 1/3 cup sugar, water and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring constantly until the sauce is thickened and strawberries are soft and somewhat broken down. Set aside to cool.
Grease and flour a 10×10-inch baking dish, knocking out excess flour, and set aside.
To make the coffee cake:
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla extract, and almond extract if you’re using it.
Sift dry ingredients together. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter in 3 parts alternating with the sour cream in 2 parts, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Beat just until combined.
Spoon 2/3 of the batter into the prepared pan. Spread the cooled strawberry mixture over the batter. Spoon the remaining batter onto the strawberries and spread evenly. Top with streusel topping and bake in the upper third of the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
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Is anybody else thinking rhubarb jam? Joy (or anyone else) – do you have a good rhubarb jam or sauce recipe?
This not only looks, but also tastes delicious;) Joy, have you been reading my mind? I sat down to my computer thinking “I’d like some yummy strawberry recipe for my moms birthday…” and I made this cake as soon as I opened my favorite foodblog. Everyone loved it. Actually I had to guard it from my family to leave it until the guests arrive.Each of my them entered the house sniffing with delight and followed the smell brought them to the kitchen;)
Thanks a lot!
Dear Joy,
I just have to bake that cake ! It is also strawberry season now here where I live: Ribeirao Preto – Brasil. Our city was once famous for its coffee, as a matter of fact, that’s how the town started ( now we only have sugar cane, pity…). And I also study Italian ( where do you get flash cards? Hopefully a website where you can give a link), because I am married to one…
When I do, I’ll post a picture in my flickr page….
thanks for your wonderful, mouth watering recipes….
i rarely comment…but i couldn’t help myself. this looks absolutely AMAAAAZING! wow. :)
Strawberries have a weird effect on me, too… they make me want to go on a road trip. The best strawberries I have EVER had were in Ponchatoula, LA on a return trip from New Orleans, and somehow the strawberry brain cells are now irrevocably attached to the road trip brain cells.
This looks amazing, and I just happen to have strawberries in my fridge. (Not Louisiana strawberries, but they’ll just have to do!)
Hello, I just found your blog. It is so lovely. This dessert looks amazing. Will mark this one down for when we hit strawberry season!
Wow!!
This is good!! It’s really soft, moist and has a little cripy crust that totally adds up!!! But I’ll make double the strawberry mixture next time!!! So yum!!!
Thank you Joy
I am soooooooooo going to make this! Just waiting for the strawberries in my backyard to ripen. I should be able to harvest the first strawberries in about a week or so ;o).
@jolynn:
I have a nice rhubarb vanilla jam recipe. Check out my site (link is above).
Oh, that looks SO good! I absolutely love strawberries! I need to hunt down some good strawberries here in AK, though. They’re hard to find.
That looks soo yummy! My friend promised me these yummy strawberries, i think she has a farmer friend and i tasted some at work and they were soo sweet and juicy. I can’t wait to make this coffee cake! I just made a Japanese cheesecake today, so I understand when you say you have lapsed in your workout routine, same here, lol. Anyways, ty for this yummy recipe :)
I just bought these cute measuring cups from anthro. I love them.
Whoa! This looks so amazing. I will have to try this soon.
Oh my. I made this last night and immediately ate two giant pieces with milk. The delicious strawberry syrupy goodness is almost too good to be true.
My co-workers thank you ma’am, as they devour the leftoevers
I get restless with cherries. I was thinking, I could use your coffee cake recipe with cherries rather than strawberries since I have lots of extra cherries, in the kitchen. Your photos look scumptious. Chaya
Made a triple batch early Friday morning and took almost all of it to work. Left for home that night with just enough left over for my own Saturday and Sunday breakfasts. At least four recipe requests will drive just a little bit more traffic your way!
This was absolutely delicious and really pretty to look at too :). I will also be doubling the strawberry mixture next time for a little extra gooey goodness!
Made this yesterday and it is delicious! I agree with Stephanie about doubling the strawberry mixture next time. I wished it had more. And my strawberry mixture wasn’t as beautifully red as the pictures?
Hi Joy, I’ve baked this delicious cake last weekend.
Instead of sour cream, I have used cream and half a lime: here in Italy it’s impossible to find sour cream anywhere!
If you need help with italian lemme know :-)
Ciao ciao, Paola
So I made this last night and gave a slice to my husband to eat, the words that came out of his mouth said it all, “oh so good, so so good you have to make this again…”
Thank you for such a superb recipe, I’m going to make another one and bring it into work.
I made this cake and doubled the strawberry filling with no problems. The cake was moist and delicious, but I think the strawberry filling could have used something to perk it up, like some orange peel or orange oil. My strawberries were also not as red as the ones in the picture once cooked. I might also cut back on the sugar in the filling a bit, it seemed kind of sweet.
this looks great i just made a strawberry coffee cake and may try your topping next time!
I found out about your blog after I Googled “strawberry coffee cake” because I had some strawberries I wanted to use up in this way. Boy, am I glad I found you! Love your site, your writing, your great photos, and your fabulous recipes. I made the coffee cake this morning, and it is as scrumptious as it looks! My husband, who doesn’t even have the sweet tooth that I do, said it was the best coffee cake he’d ever eaten. (And I’ve made a lot of them.) Thank you for continuing to blog and share your recipes.
I live in NE and our strawberry season is just a few short weeks. We’re at the end now and I don’t want to waste a single berry. This is an excellent addition to my favorite strawberry recipes. I am so glad I found you!
This recipe has been a HIT in the family!Everybody loves it!Thank you very much!
It’s an awesome combo!
joy, how do you think this would come out if baked in jumbo muffin cups (w/ liners)? it’s so handy to be able to run out of the house with a muffin. would it leak all over and be goopy?
Lisa G! I think the liners might help solve any goopyness. Give it a try and let me know how it goes for you!
I’m not even a big strawberry person (I know, I’m a weirdo) but that looks delicious. And yay for old House episodes once a day – I do that now and again myself. :-)
Thanks for the great recipe! This will be on standby for the future.
A little piece of Heaven! That is the only way that I can describe this coffee cake. My family devoured the entire cake in 1 day. Next time I think I will double the berries.
I was just wondering if you have ever made this cake with Apples or Blueberries? Also, have you tried this with a cinnamon/brown sugar streusel topping?
Just wondering….but it IS perfect just the way it is. The topping tasted just like a shortbread cookie. YUM!
looks so yummy.
This was EXTREMELY well received at work. I don’t have a 10 by 10 pan so I used a 10 inch tube pan and it worked fine. I also threw in some frozen strawberries I had thawed into the fresh strawberry sauce because it’s not really strawberry season where I am. I doubled the crumb topping because I love crumbs:). Yum. Thanks, Joy.
Looks yummmmmmmmmmy
can I substitute yogurt for the sourcream?
It’s looked amazing, but i just wonder why it’s named coffee while there no coffee in the ingredients, please help me, is there coffee or not?
This was absolutely delicious! My boyfriend and I ate about 3/4 of it in one night! I do agree with other comments saying to increase the strawberry filling. I halved the cake batter part (we’re only 2 people here) without changing the amount of strawberry filling, and next time I will still double even that amount.
Can you please tell me if you use Salted or Unsalted Butter in your recipes?
i always use unsalted butter mariam.
Hi Joy,
I made this coffee cake today, and it’s SO moist and delicious! Here’s my post about it:
http://comfortofcooking.blogspot.com/2010/04/strawberry-coffee-cake.html
(It looks ALMOST as good as yours ;)
Thanks so much for this recipe. Looking forward to meeting you at Surfas next weekend!
Georgia
Hey Joy! Just wanted to let you know that I can’t get enough of this coffee cake!!! I adore this recipe to pieces!!! Merci Beacoup…..=)
I just made this. Phenomenal. However, next time I’m going to double, maybe even triple the strawberry sauce. Soooo good!
I just made this, but since I didn’t have a 10×10 pan (thought it might overflow my 9×9 pan), I thought I’d try making these as muffins. Turned out perfect! I made 11, but they would have made 12 if I had evened out the batter just a bit better. I have some rhubarb in my garden at the moment, so I used 1 stalk of rhubarb and then topped up with strawberries to make roughly 1 1/2 cups of fruit. I added about 2 tbsp more sugar with the fruit to help out with the tartness of the rhubarb. They baked in my convection oven for about 30 minutes, so they would need a few minutes longer in a normal oven. Since I make fruit crumbles often, I usually make loads of crumble topping so that I have extra to freeze. So I didn’t actually make the topping found in this recipe, but it worked beautifully and I got to skip that step. I definitely recommend making extra of things like that. Always a help!
These turned out to be absolutely georgeous! I took some over to my husbands office and they went crazy over them. They will definitely be on my list to make over and over again.
The coffee cake is so amazing, so light and airy yet hearty and yumtastic however, I have been getting many a complaint that 1 cup is simply not enough strawberries for the cake! I think my tasters are just wanting more of the yummy sweet stuff :) Anyways, I might add more strawberries next time but the coffee cake is never changing, totally a keeper!
My mouth is watering just reading this recipe! I like the idea of using them as cupcakes too and nice to know it works like a charm. I would really love to see the images but they never seem to open up on my computer… if any techies can shed some light I’d be eternally grateful:-)
Made this recipe this weekend!! Delicious. So light and delicious! Thank you!
I made these as muffins/cupcakes to bring in to a weekly work baking event — they came out *fantastic*! I’m saving this link. :D
what do you think of making this with cranberries instead of strawberries? about how much sugar would you add when cooking the cranberries? thanks!!
Just made this. Added some blueberries as well. It’s delicious, and made good use of the almost expired sour cream and about to go bad strawberries hanging out in my fridge. Thanks!
Day two of cooking in my new kitchen and I’m not sure which I like better, the butterscotch pudding and caramelized bananas from yesterday, or this cake from tonight. It’s a toss up! I’m excited to prowl around your blog more tomorrow to figure out what to make next… marshmallows maybe? or those amazing looking apple oatmeal cookies.. I have a huge bag of beautiful crisp Okanagan, BC apples that would be perfect.
This was so delicious and very moist! Per the recommendations of a few of the previous comments, I doubled the strawberry filling, and it came out perfect. I brought it in to work today and have received many compliments. Now I’m thinking about switching out the strawberries for other berries too – blueberries, raspberries…I love versatile recipes! Thanks for sharing!
I just made this cake and it was great! I was really apprehensive when I had a hard time spreading the (thick) strawberry layer, and then an even harder time spreading the (very thick) top layer of the cake batter, but it baked up just fine. I subbed out half of the regular flour for whole wheat flour, but I don’t think I’ll do that again because it was too hearty of a flavor for those delicate strawberries. Oh yeah, I also subbed plain Greek yogurt and a splash of heavy cream for the sour cream, just because it’s what I had on hand.
Thanks for the recipe!
Thank you so much for this wonderful recipe! I made this last night to bring over to my parents house, and have eaten some both for dessert last night, and breakfast this morning. It is so light and wonderful, the strawberry filling is delicious, and I love crumbly toppings, so that was just a bonus!
I lol’d at the “watching an old episode of House everynight before passing out”. I used to do that too! I thought I was the only one…well I think I’m going to make this for my office party tomorrow, seems like a good break from the more traditional standard coffee cake. I’m sure it’s going to be delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
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