Alpha Bakers -- Coffee Crumb Cake Muffins

 

When is a muffin a cupcake? When is a cake breakfast? These are existential dilemmas that expand beyond the range of your average Saturday morning blog post, and are thus out of my purview, but let it be known that when you put coffee cake in muffin tins and slip in a bit of apple, you have successfully effected the transformation to muffin. Here they are! They were delicious. 

Alpha Bakers -- Blueberry Sour Cream Crumb Coffeecake

Keep your towering buttercream fortresses. I'll take a crumb cake loaded with fruit and buttery streusel any day. This is coffeecake in the best style, perfect for all-day eating. A soft sour cream butter cake, threaded through with a sugary nutty streusel, then topped with blueberries and crumbs. This is all that's needed to gain entry to the clubbiest Kaffeeklastch.

My colleagues...well let's just say they agreed. I was glad I'd had a square for breakfast, because by the time my coffee break arrived, it was no more. I followed the recipe fairly faithfully, only substituting almonds for walnuts in the streusel.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Crunchy, Custardy, Peach Tart

This was a perfectly wonderful tart. I used some tart dough left over from a brief flirtation with Maury Rubin's Book of Tarts. I love custard, and I love peaches. I thought the nutty streusel, which I sprinkled quite inexpertly (looks a bit like dog food, no?), was overkill. But I like peaches (and apricots) and custard very much indeed. The tart pictured went to the same dinner party that featured the Lemon Meringue Cake. Despite the competition, I think this tart would have stolen the flavor show if not for one flaw--it had been made the night before and had sadly become a bit soggy. Still delicious though. The little overflow individuals that I made and ate the night before? Flawless.

Oh, and did you want to see some of my experiments with the tart book? The fancy ones, in individual flan rings? The kind I used to have to lift with a large spatula off of marble slabs during my brief stint behind the City Bakery counter? The ones I, frankly, always wondered why people bought when there were croissants sitting right there. Clearly, I'm a pastry person. But this plum tart with almond cream was as edible as it was picturesque. I still have the book from the library, so there may be more of what Matt calls 'spare dessert.' Take me for what I am. Who I was meant to be.