Stop the mixer and scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl from time to time. Beat on medium low speed just to blend, then on high for 5 minutes. Add the butter and both sugars to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.Add the flour, cornstarch, salt, and nutmeg to a bowl and stir with a wire whisk to blend.Prepare a 9-inch square baking pan by greasing the inside with butter or shortening then shaking flour around inside the pan until the bottom and sides are completely coated. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap and set aside. Pour in the butter and stir until all the dry ingredients are throughly moistened. Add all the crumb topping ingredients except the melted butter to a bowl and stir to mix.If you give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment, rate it, or take a picture and tag it #ofbatteranddough on Instagram. More morning pastry recipes you might like: But, if it means cake for breakfast, I'm in. Why these types of cakes? I have no idea. The names are just markers for the kind of cake we feel justified in eating first thing in the morning. Rather than just eat cake for breakfast, we've created categories of breakfast cakes that we call 'coffee cake' and 'muffins'. We - you, me, everyone - love cake for breakfast. So, I'd take a good piece of crumb cake any time of day, but this is the kind of cake that just begs to be eaten for breakfast. You won't think that ¼ cup of cream, whipped to soft peaks, will do all that much.

That technique works so well in this cake. At the beginning of the book, Shirley explains that when folded gently into the batter right before baking, whipped cream adds additional air, giving cakes a soft, silky texture. One of my favorite baking books of all time is BakeWise by Shirley O’Corriher.

Whipped cream gives this cake a super fine, buttery texture.

Also, room temperature ingredients are much easier to beat into a smooth, fully blended batter that results in a uniform texture and even baking. All that trapped air expands in the oven, giving cakes their fluffy consistency. When baking a cake, you almost always want dairy ingredients to be at room temperature because that allows them for form an emulsion that traps air. But, if you prefer a delicate, loose crumb topping, just break the crumbs up as you sprinkle them on the cake. To get those big crumbs, just squeeze the crumb topping together in your hand as you add it to the top of the cake batter.

The size of the crumbs is up to you. I like my crumb cake to be topped with big, fat crumbs that are practically the size of small cookies.

Beyond that, in sweet foods, salt actually brings out the sweetness. Salt is crucial to everything delicious - savory and sweet - because it enhances the flavors in whatever it is your making. I've seen recipes for crumb toppings that do not include salt and I just don't understand them. Honestly, I think you could get away with more crumb than cake, because, as I said earlier, crumb cake is all about the crumb. Americans must agree, because that's the proportion you're most likely to find in bakeries across the country.

German bakers aimed for a 50/50 ratio between the cake and the crumb. What IS similar is the proportion of cake to crumb. Traditionally, the cake was baked with a yeast dough, which is rarely the case here in the US. More accurately, I should say that crumb cake is the English word for streuselkuchen because this buttery cake topped with a pile of buttery streusel originated in Germany. Good crumb cake is all about the crumb, which should be buttery, brown sugar sweet, and piled on in excess. The Cake is not actually the point of crumb cake.

Batterandcrumbs