Mini Blueberry Coffee Cakes (yields 4!)
So. As you can see from today’s post, I’m still really digging my mini pans.
Ok. Fine.
Totally obsessed with my mini pans. I’ve gotta admit I’m totally smitten with small batch baking. Its’s great. You can have your cake (or coffee cake!), eat it, and not gain an extra 10 pounds. Because, let’s face it. I’m totally one of those people who can get up every morning and have a piece (or two!) of coffee cake for breakfast everyday… until it’s gone. That’s like a million, zillion, zillion, gazillion calories or something by the time I’m done.
That’s me ::sugar addict:: right here people.
But this recipe is cool, even for me, because it only yields four mini cakes. That means one for me, the hubby, and each of the kids. (Well actually not for Tristan cause of the dairy. He gets his own dairy free version and someone else who is not me usually gets two. But you get the general gist here, right?) After that it’s all gone. Yay, crumbly, buttery, blueberry laden coffee cake for breakfast + my pants still fitting! I’m telling you small batch baking is where it’s at. Especially perfect for Saturday morning, if you ask me. (As in tomorrow! Yay!)
Saturday mornings at my house are great, kind of wild sometimes, but great.
Poor Charlie is usually completely deliriously exhausted by Saturday so I generally try to let him sleep in. So I get up with the boys, frequently at the crack of dawn. Why do little kids get up so early!?! Once I’ve had a few minutes to adjust to being awake at such a rude hour, I brew a pot of coffee and make something nice for breakfast. Maybe bacon and eggs, buttermilk pancakes, or, uhhem mini coffee cakes. In between string, flipping, or checking the oven , I’m usually reminding/begging/sitting on the boys to keep them quiet so that they won’t wake up Charlie. The goal being that he actually gets to sleep in. It mostly even works.
When Charlie does get up all bets are off. All morning Aiden and Tristan have been dutifully containing themselves, and keeping the decibel level, very reasonably, slightly below that of a blaring fire alarm. But, as soon as they see their Dad they explode with the pent up force of a thousand tiny suns.
Much roughhousing, indoor basketball playing, and other madness commences. What can I say, this is life with two high energy little boys? Somewhere in there Charlie manages to snag a cup of coffee and give me a quick kiss, before returning to the game of the moment.
But me, I just sit back and watch the boys love on/torture their Dad and eat my coffee cake. Bliss.
P.S. If you’ve been reading for a while you may have noticed that I’ve added a “yum” button to my posts. It’s located at the top left of each post, above the post title. If you use yummly to organize your recipes, it would be deeply appreciated if you would click the yum button for any of my recipes you might be interested in; which will automatically save them in your recipe collection. This helps me a ton by spreading the word about my recipes! Thanks in advance for the help!
In case you don’t already know what yummly is… I’d describe it as the recipe collection app/website for foodies! It allows you to collect and save recipes from all around the web with ease. Users can sort their saved recipes into collections to keep them organized. It’s a great way to never loose a recipe you want to try! I read like a zillion food blogs myself, and I’m totally going to start saving the many, many recipes I want to try this way from now on!
The awesome part for food bloggers is that when a reader saves a recipe it is added in the yummly database. (To be more specific the recipes ingredient list a link back to the original source of the recipe is added to the database, not the whole recipe.) Yummly then goes on to rank the recipes based on how many people have added them to their collections.
P.P.S. ::UPDATE:: I received an email from a reader asking me to clarify about the size/type of pans I used in this recipe by posting a picture of my pans. So here you go! There is a standard sized 9in round in the picture to help everyone gauge size. I used the pans in the upper right (4×1.25) in this recipe. However the mini springforms on the bottom right would work just as well. If you don’t have any mini pans you could certainly use a jumbo cupcake pan instead, though baking time might need to be increased by a few minutes. Look for a toothpick coming clean from the center to test for doneness.
Mini Blueberry Coffee Cakes – Yields 4 mini cakes. Use 4in wide x 1 and 1/4 in tall mini pans. A jumbo cupcake pan would make a good substitution if you don’t have mini pans. Adapted from The Commonsense Kitchen.
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup loosely packed brown sugar
- 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 stick salted butter, chilled
- 1/8 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup blueberries, washed and dried
1. Preheat the oven to 375*. Grease (with butter or canola oil) the four mini pans. Place the pans on a foil lined baking sheet and set aside.
2. In a large bowl mix together the sugar, brown sugar, and flour. Cut in the butter in small cubes. Use your hands or a fork to work the butter rapidly into the flour mixture until a fine crumble is formed. Reserve about 1/2 cup of the mixture in a small bowl for topping the coffee cakes.
3. Add the salt, baking powder, and baking soda to the large bowl. Use a fork to make sure the ingredients distribute evenly. Then add the buttermilk and vanilla to the mixture. Mix until just smooth.
4. Fill each mini pan about 1/3 of the way full from the batter in the large bowl. Evenly distribute the blueberries between the four pans and place them on top of the batter. Spoon the remaining batter over the blueberries, again distributing between the four pans.
5. Evenly distribute the reserved crumble mixture over the tops of the four cakes. Press gently to help the crumble adhere.
6. Bake the cakes at 375* for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean through the center of the cake. The tops will be golden brown. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool in the pans for ten minutes. After ten minutes remove the cakes from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack.
