Chocolate Toffee Crunch Coffee Cake—Secret Recipe Club

Chocolate Toffee Crunch Cake

It’s May Secret Recipe Club time!  I sure enjoy every month having a newly assigned blog to scour over and try to narrow down just what I’m going to make.  This month was no exception.  I was assigned Kim’s blog, Everyday Mom.  She is a busy mom with three kids who loves to bake.  What’s not to love about her? ;)  In looking through her blog, I can see that she spends a lot of time baking WITH her kids.  What a great thing.  I don’t bake with mine as much—I don’t know if it is because I have four boys and they aren’t quite as excited to bake along with me when I want them to.  One of my sons does enjoy it, but they are often just not around and I seem to do most of my baking while they are at school.

In my search of Kim’s blog for what to make, I was drawn to a couple of cakes.  One is an Oatmeal Raisin Cake—I still plan to make that sometime.  Sounds really good.  I was actually going to make both cakes and have company over to help eat them, but I ended up just making one and started with this toffee cake.  Kim got the recipe for it in her baking group, Cake Slice Bakers.  The cake is a recipe from Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman.  It is actually supposed to have espresso powder in the cake as it was focused on being a coffee flavored cake with toffee in it.  Since I don’t “do” coffee, I switched it up with adding a little cocoa powder to the cake instead. 

The boys actually really liked the cake, which surprised me just because they don’t seem to like cookies when I put toffee in them.  Go figure.  I’ll never figure these guys out.  Here’s the cake as I made it, but check out Kim’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch Cake.

Chocolate Toffee Crunch Coffee Cake, adapted from Lauren Chattman’s Cake Keeper Cakes, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

For the cake:

1  1/2 cups (180 grams) all purpose flour

1 tablespoon (5 grams) cocoa powder

1  1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup packed light brown sugar (220 grams)

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1  1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup milk (I used 2%)

For the streusel:

3/4 cup toffee bits

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Have a 9 inch round springform pan ready to spray with cooking spray (I like to do it right before putting the cake batter in the pan.)

In a medium sized bowl, combine the toffee bits, chocolate chips, brown sugar, flour and butter.  Work the mixture with your fingers until it resembles large crumbs.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl.  Whisk together to sift.  Set aside.  Cream together in the bowl of an electric mixer the butter and brown sugar.  Beat on medium-high until fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Scrapes the sides of the bowl.  Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla and mix together on low speed.  With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture and milk alternately, ending with the flour.  Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula and stir to make sure all is combined well.  Spray the pan with cooking spray and scrape the batter into the pan.  Smooth it into an even layer.  Scatter the streusel evenly onto the batter. 

Bake the cake 45-55 minutes (I did 45 minutes), until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes.  Release the sides of the springform pan.  Cool completely.  Cut in to wedges and serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

At the time I made the cake, we didn’t have any ice cream or whipping cream.  But I’d found a container of frozen non-dairy whip cream in the freezer, so we waited a short time, then scooped out dollops of it onto the slices of cake.  It looks like ice cream, but it’s not.  Here it is finally starting to thaw.

Since I didn’t make the cake low fat or with whole grain, I only took a few bites of it.  It’s good!  With all the toffee bits and the brown sugar, it’s definitely sweet and caramel-ly.  I, of course, liked the added chocolate.

It is always so fun to check out all the other Secret Recipe Club postings.  The group has grown so big that were are now in 4 different groups, each posting on Mondays through the month.  I’m in group A.  So fun to be getting to know so many wonderful blogs out there.