innkeepers coffee cake;

Want your whole house to smell like buttery cinnamon sugar? Make this innkeepers coffee cake! Innkeepers coffee cake is soft buttery cake and a layer of strawberries and swirls of cinnamon sugar, all topped with a crunchy cinnamon sugar and pecan crust. This is one of the best coffee cakes around!

Any nuts work great in this coffee cake. Pecans are my favorite, but you could try walnuts, macadamia nuts, or almonds to name a few.

secret to success

I find it best to start with the easy prep work. That means the topping! Only three ingredients, so it’s simple and quick. I like to use pecans because they’re my favorite, but you can use most any soft nut like walnuts or macadamia nuts. If I were going to do almonds, which I consider a bit on the harder side of the nut spectrum, I’d prefer slivered or sliced almonds as opposed to chopping them myself, or I would chop them very finely.

I do a rough chop on pecans since I think you get a delicious savory roasted nut flavor when you bite into one. Then set it aside and move to your filling. You’ll actually use a bit of this “topping” to sprinkle onto the filling layer later, but if you’re like me and forget, I just swirled some into the top layer of the coffee cake. Still tasted yummy!

When it comes to fruit filling I really love fresh strawberries. I slice mine thinly, but you can also dice them if you prefer smaller chunks. Diced strawberries are a little easier to spread evenly across the innkeepers coffee cake. Since I made these in winter, I sprinkled a bit of sugar onto the strawberries, but you could skip it if you have deliciously ripe strawberries that don’t need the extra sugar.

The best part? You can use almost any fruit as filling!

secret to success

One of the best things about this innkeepers coffee cake is that you can use pretty much any fruit: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries? All great choices. But the options don’t stop there. Tart cherries are a great complement to the sweetness of the coffee cake; or for something a little different, try sliced bananas. Thinly sliced or diced apples would go great—who doesn’t love apple cinnamon?! Or peaches in the summer…at this point, I’m just listing pretty much every fruit, right?

Keep in mind the moisture content of the fruit you’re using, especially if it’s fresh. If your fruit is particularly juicy, I would take out 1-2 Tbsp of sour cream to help adjust the moisture content. Make sure if you’re using frozen fruit, it’s thawed and drained before adding to the innkeepers coffee cake.

You can also use any pie filling as an alternative to fresh fruit: lemon filling goes lovely for a bright taste, or any of your traditional pie fillings are gold: cherry, apple, blueberry, heck even pumpkin!

This recipe is sure to become a staple in your household since it’s so, so good, and you can change up the flavors so it never gets old!

This coffee cake does take a while to bake, so make sure you plan enough time before serving!

secret to success

This is an American-style coffee cake, which is a sweet cake usually with cinnamon and a crumble topping. European style kaffe kuchen is typically a more bread-like experience as opposed to cake.

Sometimes you’ll find recipes add coffee to the batter, but traditionally that’s not the case. Both American and European coffee cakes were simply paired with coffee and did not use it as an ingredient.

The innkeepers coffee cake does require a long baking time, so make sure you factor that in to your plans! Because it has both baking soda and baking powder, you can’t let it rest overnight and then bake it off the next morning. I mean you can, but you’ll lose some of the gorgeous height on your coffee cake.

Baking powder would actually still have some reaction as it’s a two-part acting—both when mixed and when baked. So storing it in the fridge overnight could preserve a little bit of that first reaction, and you’ll still get that second reaction when baking. But the baking soda reaction starts when mixed with wet ingredients and creates carbon dioxide. So waiting overnight can let the gas escape, and losing the immediate effects of both leavening agents means a less airy, fluffy cake.

So I don’t recommend it, but hey, I can’t tell you what to do, so do whatever you want! If you don’t mind a slightly denser coffee cake and love a fresh, warm coffee cake in the morning, maybe you can ignore my science speak and do it anyway!

Do make sure you account for the 60-75 minute bake time before you want to serve it, though. 75 minutes was perfect for my oven, and I checked that a toothpick came out clean in the center. The topping forms a crust. So if you do test with any instrument, make sure it’s got a little room to breathe when you check. Meaning, when you push through the crust, make sure the hole isn’t so tight that it scrapes off the batter when you pull it back up. You should also feel a bit of resistance once it’s baked solid as opposed to a more liquid batter.

Innkeepers coffee cake is best served warm, and if you can’t get up early enough to have it warm from the oven, pop it in the microwave or a low-temperature oven to heat it up before serving! I promise you won’t regret it.

secrets to success;

Want all the best tips and tricks to make this recipe a success? Check out the blog post above to find out more!

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more recipes;

Looking for other delicious cakes and treats that pair well with coffee? Check out these scrumptious options!

• Don’t need to feed a crowd? Try these small-batch homemade greek yogurt pancakes that are healthy and so, so yummy!
• Another fan-favorite are these twice baked breakfast sweet potatoes. Chock full of hearty ingredients, these will keep you full all morning!
• This innkeepers coffee cake just might replace cream cheese apple cake as my new go-to coffee cake! This innkeepers coffee cake is a more “traditional” cinnamon sugar-inspired coffee cake, but the cream cheese apple cake still has hints of cinnamon and sweet cheesecake swirled alongside chunky apples.